Senior RF/Antenna Design Engineer

Salary: A salary range of £47,866 to £56,082, including a concessionary payment of £2,658, and a skills payment. The final amount depends on your skills and experience. You’ll also receive a one-off recruitment bonus of £3,500 (£1,750 on arrival and £1,750 on successful completion of probation)

Flexible working:

We offer a range of flexible working patterns, including offering full-time, part-time, and compressed hours to support your individual needs. While homeworking isn’t possible due to the nature of the role, we can offer flexibility, such as variations in start and finish times, where business needs allow.

About us

GCHQ is an intelligence, cyber, and security agency with a mission to keep the UK safe. We use cutting-edge technology, ingenuity and partnerships to identify, analyse and disrupt threats. Working with our intelligence partners MI5 and MI6, we protect the UK from terrorism, cyber-attacks and espionage. At GCHQ you’ll do varied and fascinating work in a supportive and inclusive environment that puts the emphasis on teamwork.

The role

As a Senior Radio Frequency (RF) Antenna Design Engineer, you’ll work closely with our Principal RF Engineer on RF antenna design, while also contributing to wider electronic hardware design, research, and testing. As part of a mixed team of software, hardware, and Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) engineers, you’ll work on projects ranging from embedded antenna design to propagation modelling.

Responsibilities span component-level RF design involvement across the full lifecycle from design to delivery, identifying and helping to mitigate technical risks, and producing high-quality design and test documentation. You’ll also be involved in hardware Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and system-level testing and verification, contributing to future antenna and RF technique research, developing and maintaining BASH/C wrapper helper scripts, and integrating with and testing a variety of capabilities.

About you

You bring several years of experience in a similar role, preferably with practical experience in component-level Antenna design. Your background may also include working on matching networks, filter design, PA or LNA analysis and specification or other component-level electronic design. You also have:

• experience working with Vector Network Analysers and Smith Charts
• the ability to engage internal and external customers and work with other organisations
• a proactive mindset, with the motivation to spot opportunities, adapt quickly and learn new skills
• experience in successfully delivering projects from design to delivery

Experience with scripting and basic coding (BASH, Python or C on Microcontrollers), along with familiarity with Microsoft Office and ANSYS, is desirable but not essential. We’ll provide comprehensive training to ensure you have the tools and knowledge you need to succeed.

Training and development

The first three days of your time with us will be dedicated to a comprehensive department induction, designed to help you understand how things work and who does what.

At GCHQ, we’re committed to your growth and development. You’ll have dedicated time and space for continuous learning, experimentation, and improvement, with up to 30% of your time available for personal development.

We’ll support your professional development, including opportunities to gain accreditations such as Chartered Engineer (CEng) status if that’s the route you wish to pursue. You’ll also be assigned a buddy who’ll provide guidance and support throughout your time with us.

Your training and ongoing support will be tailored to you, as you’ll be working within a small team where development can be shaped around your needs. While most training is delivered in-house, we also offer regular opportunities to top up your knowledge through external training providers.

You’ll have the chance to either mentor a junior colleague or be mentored by someone more experienced, depending on what will best support your growth.

Your learning will draw on the broad expertise across the team, and you’ll also be encouraged to identify additional courses or learning opportunities that help deepen your knowledge in specific areas.

Throughout your career here, you’ll have continued access to the support and resources needed to pursue relevant accreditations, ensuring you can grow in the direction that’s right for you.

Rewards and benefits

We offer a competitive salary between £47,866 to £56,082, dependent on your skills and experience. This includes a concessionary payment of £2,658 and a skills payment. All successful candidates receive a one-off recruitment bonus of £3,500.

Other benefits include:

• 25 days’ annual leave, automatically rising to 30 days after 5 years’ service, and an additional 10.5 days public and privilege holidays
• opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme
• an interest-free season ticket loan
• an excellent pension scheme
• a cycle to work scheme
• facilities such as a gym, restaurant, and on-site coffee bars (at some locations)
• paid parental and adoption leave

Equal opportunities

At GCHQ diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission. To protect the UK, we need a truly diverse workforce that reflects the society we serve. This includes diversity in every sense of the word: those with different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, ways of thinking and those with disabilities or neurodivergent conditions. We therefore welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including those from groups that are under-represented in our workforce such as women, those from an ethnic minority background, people with disabilities and those from low socio-economic backgrounds.

Find out more about our culture, working environment and diversity on our website.

We’re Disability Confident

GCHQ is proud to have achieved Leader status within the Department for Work and Pensions ‘Disability Confident scheme. This is aimed at encouraging employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain, and develop disabled people. As a Disability Confident Leader, we aim to ensure that a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants who best meet the essential minimum criteria for this position, will be offered an interview, if it is practical for us to do so. (This is known as Offer of an Interview.) To secure an interview for this role, the minimum criteria (in order of application process) are:

• evidence of successfully delivering a technical project or piece of work
• extensive component-level RF or Antenna Design experience
• experience with Vector Network Analysers and Smith Charts
• experience engaging with a range of different stakeholders

There is a wide range of extra support available throughout the recruitment process to enable you to do your best; see our website for information on reasonable adjustments we can offer.

What to expect

Our recruitment process is fair, transparent, and based on merit. Here is a brief overview of each stage, in order:

• application sift
• online Technical and Competency based interview, including a presentation
• if successful, you will receive a conditional offer of employment

Please note, you must successfully pass each stage of the process to progress to the next. Your application may take around 6 to 9 months to process including vetting, so we advise you continue any current employment until you have received your final job offer.

Before you apply

To work at GCHQ you need to be a British citizen or hold dual British nationality. Read about our eligibility criteria.

This role requires the highest security clearance, known as Developed Vetting (DV). It’s something everyone in the UK Intelligence Community undertakes. Find out more about the vetting process.

Please note we have a strict drugs policy, so once you start your application, you can’t take any recreational drugs, and you’ll need to declare your previous drug usage at the relevant stage.

Before you apply, we advise you to consider setting up a separate email address for your contact with us, to ensure your personal and application correspondence remain separate. Try to avoid having identifying features in your email address, such as your first and/or surname and date of birth. This is good practice and will help you to manage your application with us more securely.

The role is based in Cheltenham, so you’ll need to live within a commutable distance. Please consider any financial implications and practicalities before submitting an application, as we do not offer relocation costs.

Please note, you should only launch your application from within the UK. If you are based overseas, you should wait until you visit the UK to launch an application. Applying from outside the UK will impact on our ability to progress your application. You should not discuss your application, other than with your partner or a close family member.

Right to withdraw statement:

Please be aware that we withhold the right to bring forward the closing date for this role from the original closing date once a certain number of applications have been received. Please be mindful of this and submit your application at your earliest convenience to avoid disappointment.