Senior Staff Engineer, RF Power Amplifier Design - Arlington Heights, IL, United States
Originally posted 6 August 2026 by the employer — open 42 days.
This role focuses on RF power amplifier platforms for cellular and Wi-Fi front-end applications.
About the role
This position is responsible for technical leadership, architecture definition, and end-to-end design direction for advanced RF power amplifier platforms supporting cellular and Wi-Fi front-end applications. The role guides complex technical tradeoff decisions across performance, cost, manufacturability, and time-to-market for power amplifiers across multiple frequency bands and semiconductor processes, including SOI and GaAs.
What you'll do
- Lead the development and technical evaluation of novel architectures, circuits, devices, and methods for high-performance RF power amplifiers and transmit chains using co-design and co-simulation of active and passive circuitry.
- Provide technical leadership for advanced RF power amplifier platforms, including design reviews, architecture tradeoff decisions, and technical risk resolution across multiple programs.
- Drive advanced power amplifier design across multiple process technologies and supply modulation approaches, including envelope tracking.
- Lead cross-functional technical collaboration with engineering teams on PA technologies, aligning design decisions and resolving escalated technical issues.
- Partner with key stakeholders to influence, refine, and execute the long-term architectural roadmap for PA platforms.
- Lead technical execution of PA proof-of-concept prototypes and transition successful technologies into high-volume products.
What you'll need
- 12+ years of RF FEM product development experience with demonstrated expert-level technical capability in the design, development, and commercialization of advanced RF power amplifier products.
- 5+ years of direct experience with GaAs-based power amplifier product development.
- 5+ years of advanced development experience directly related to mobile power amplifier and/or transmitter design.
- Detailed knowledge and experience with design of envelope tracking (ET) PA for mobile applications.
- Direct hands-on experience with the design of highly efficient and linear power amplifiers operating between 600 MHz and 20 GHz.
- Experience with transistor level IC design and layout in GaAs HBT, CMOS-SOI, SiGe, GaN technology nodes.
- Good Wi-Fi and/or cellular standard system knowledge and key performance metrics.
- Knowledge of IC fabrication and how it impacts circuit performance.
- Good understanding of non-linear effects in transistors.
- Knowledge of basic analog bias and control circuits and their impact on overall RF system.
- Experience with EM (Electromagnetic) modelling of high frequency RFIC's and PCB's.
- Familiarity with analog & RF IC layout techniques.
- Multiple successful IC tape-outs and demonstrated contribution across the full product life cycle from concept definition through validation, release, and production ramp.
- Experience in design, debug and optimization of RFICs in the lab using standard lab equipment.
- Hands on use of RF measurement equipment to validate and correlate performance metrics such as ACP/ACLR, EVM, IP3, NF and gain.
- Proficiency with Virtuoso, Cadence Spectre, Keysight ADS, EM software, Matlab, JMP software tools.
- Master's degree in Electrical Engineering (or equivalent field).
Skills: RF power amplifier, cellular, Wi-Fi, GaAs, envelope tracking
This role has been open 41 days — exactly the 41-day median for RF/Wireless Engineering roles.
RF/Wireless Engineering · RF Frontend
|
Open roles in category
260
|
Median days open
41 d
|
Median salary
$164k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | pSemi | All employers we track in this specialty (260 roles · 34 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 5 | 260 |
| Open roles in the wider Analog & Mixed-Signal family | 6 | 1319 · 102 employers |
| Median days open | 41 d | 41 d (same as this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $164k |
Skills observed across this category: RF power amplifier, cellular, Wi-Fi, GaAs, envelope tracking
Who's hiring in this category
- QORVO · 49 open roles · median 29 d
- Skyworks · 36 open roles · median 26 d
- Qualcomm · 26 open roles · median 62 d
- Keysight Technologies · 25 open roles · median 169 d
- Apple · 21 open roles · median 15 d
- Analog Devices · 11 open roles · median 33 d
How we counted: 260 open RF/Wireless Engineering (RF Frontend) roles from 34 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 17 Sept 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Analog & Mixed-Signal family row. Figures refresh nightly.