PERM
ONSITE - JAX/North STA -
Salary - $150k
s/
- Direct, hands-on experience running RF and microwave lab equipment in a measurement-intensive environment — bench time, not just simulation, EDA, or design work.
- Working experience in cryogenic test environments — dilution refrigerators, pulse tubes, cryogenic probers, or equivalent — including the practical realities of thermal anchoring, cold-chain signal integrity, and what breaks at low temperature.
- Deep, practical fluency with precision S-parameter, noise, and time-domain measurements: calibration choices, error budgets, fixturing, and the places those assumptions quietly fail.
- Discipline around the operational side of a lab — calibration cadences, cable and connector hygiene, equipment logs, and the kind of documentation that lets the next person reproduce what you did.
- Track record of running equipment independently and keeping it running without on-site senior supervision.
- Comfort operating in a startup environment where priorities shift, procedures are still being written, and "we don''t have one yet" is a frequent answer.
This experience will make a candidate stand out - not 100% needed
- Direct experience with scanning SQUID microscopy — or substantive exposure to programs that ran it. This is a rare skill set globally and a strong differentiator.
- Background supporting SFQ, AQFP, qubit, or superconducting detector measurement programs at a research university, national lab, or industry group.
- Time at NIST, MIT Lincoln Lab, Sandia, or a comparable national lab in a cryogenic RF or superconducting characterization role.
- Python and scientific computing skills for measurement automation, instrument control, and turning one-off scripts into reproducible measurement pipelines.
- Experience with millimeter-wave measurement above 20 GHz, low phase noise characterization, or noise-figure work where uncertainty quantification actually mattered.
- EM/microwave simulation experience that you''ve used to predict and then explain real measurement outcomes — not just generate plots.
- Evidence of ownership outside the job description: instruments you built, fixtures you designed, methodology you published, or labs you stood up from scratch.
- Own day-to-day operation of the Jacksonville RF/cryo test lab — instruments running, fridges loaded, samples measured, data captured.
- Execute high-precision RF and microwave measurements on superconducting device samples, including S-parameter, noise, and time-domain characterization at cryogenic temperatures.
- Maintain the instrumentation that keeps those measurements honest: VNAs, cryogenic probers, microwave components, cabling, connectors, and the cold-chain signal path end to end.
- Define and hold the line on calibration schedules, cable management, fixturing standards, and equipment logs — the unglamorous discipline that separates trustworthy data from noise.
- Support scanning SQUID microscopy measurement campaigns when required, and own the training pipeline that brings junior staff up on SSM technique as the program scales.
- Capture, document, and hand off test data to the remote physics team in a form they can actually reason from — including the context, conditions, and caveats that make the numbers meaningful.
- Drive root-cause investigation when measurements disagree with theory or with each other — fixture, calibration, sample, or physics, you figure out which.
- Partner with device physicists, fab engineers, and other test staff to keep measurement methodology and process feedback loops tight.