Principal RF Engineer (AU)

Work with cutting edge AI technology, making the world a safer and more secure place. DroneShield (ASX:DRO) offers an opportunity to solve some of world’s most challenging technical problems in the rapidly growing counter-drone sector. Our customers operate in some of the most challenging and high-stakes environments in the world, including military organisations, government agencies, airports, critical infrastructure operators, and law enforcement. Protecting airspace in these settings requires technology that performs under pressure and teams that understand what’s at stake. At DroneShield, employees work at the leading edge of counter-drone innovation, helping to address real-world security challenges as drone threats continue to evolve globally. With one of the largest listed defence company market capitalisations in Australia, now part of the ASX200 index, DroneShield is experiencing a period of hypergrowth. Revenue has surged from A$57 million in 2024 to over A$190 million in 2025, representing growth of more than 400% year-on-year, with record profitability and cashflow. The total addressable global market for counter-drone is assessed at approximately $100 billion, and is currently at the nascent stage with much of the growth still to come, with DroneShield well positioned as a global market leader, and the only public listed pure-play business in this sector. The company has grown from 11 employees in 2017 to over 450 staff globally today, and is on track to reach around 550 by the end of 2026. This expansion includes investment of over A$50 million annually in R&D, a global pipeline exceeding A$2.5 billion, and continuous scaling of production capacity to meet accelerating demand. Adelaide serves as one of DroneShield’s primary technology and research hubs, bringing together engineers, data scientists, and domain experts focused on advancing counter-drone innovation. The team contributes to the development of detection, analytics, and mitigation technologies, supporting the continuous evolution of DroneShield’s software-defined and AI-enabled capabilities. This hub plays a central role in maintaining the company’s technical edge in a rapidly changing threat environment. About the role DroneShield is seeking a Principal RF Engineer with relevant experience to join the team in Adelaide, South Australia. The position will report to the Embedded Hardware Manager within the Sensors and Effectors Team. The Sensors and Effectors team at Droneshield is focused on providing fully operational and qualified modular devices to enable new product development of high-end RF based sensors and effectors. These modules are re-used across various product configurations including man-portable, vehicle mounted and fixed site. Key technical challenges for the electronics aspect of these modules include the design of complex wide-band RF circuitry, high speed digital interface and high-power radio frequency output. DroneShield designs and builds the full signal chain from signal generation to antenna. The expectations of this role will be focussed on the architecture of the system and detailed design, working with other teams to ensure the next generation product remain class leading. This will include inputs to the next generation electronics architecture, guiding engineers on SCH/PCB design implementation, reviewing validation test plan development, troubleshooting existing design problems and hardware issue root-case analysis and resolution. Responsibilities, Duties and Expectations Self-management of workload, methods and workflow to meet key business objectives Schematic and PCB design using Altium, including contribution to component database and document templates Expert knowledge with test equipment for validation of high-speed digital and RF interfaces, including training younger engineers for correct usage Manufacturing test specification design and support for production setup & debugging Hardware design validatio ... (truncated, view full listing at source)