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RF hardware engineer/Space & defense/Denver, CO

RF hardware engineer.
AI-native builder ofeverything else.

I lead RF architecture and front-end design for space and defense hardware: link budgets, L- to Ku-band front ends, phased arrays and flight test. Outside the lab, AI agents are my engineering team. With them I ship RF test benches, a mains-switching PCB, software products and the infrastructure they run on.

See the builds Resume

Key specifications

RF hardware for space and defense7+yrs
Engineering hours saved by one tool I built1,500hrs
Builds shipped with AI agents, below11
Parts on a mains PCB, brief to routed in 3 days288
Fig. 1 · Receive chain, cascaded
REFCR1U1FL1U2MX1U3CASCADE
G, dB−0.4+18.0−1.8+15.0−7.0+20.0+43.8
NF, dB0.40.91.82.57.53.01.42
NF to here0.401.301.331.391.411.42
01RF engineering

The day job: RF systems for space and defense.

A1

System architecture

Link budgets, architecture trades and RF architecture for high-stakes proposals, and presenting the design to customers as the technical authority.

A2

Front-end design

L- through Ku-band front ends, from HFSS, Microwave Office and ADS simulation through procurement and flight test.

A3

Phased arrays

Digital beamforming boards, a 1:16 distribution network at 35 dB gain and 40 A, and bare-metal T/R switch firmware.

A4

Test and process

SCPI test automation, standardized design reviews and "test like you fly" protocols that cut non-conformances.

Before engineering, nine years in operations and supply-chain planning. It's why I weigh trades in schedule and dollars as well as dB.

Full resume →
02Built with AI

Software, hardware and everything in between.

Each build was designed and shipped with AI agents, mostly Claude Code, under the same discipline I use on flight hardware. Every page says what the agents did and how the work was checked.

02.1

RF & test

Instrument control and analysis tools for the RF lab, built for how RF engineers actually work.

MB-100Live on this site
The workbench's signal-chain editor with the example receive chain, and its cascade summary showing 43.8 dB gain and 1.42 dB noise figure.

RF Workbench

Browser RF tools on this site. Draw a signal chain and get a live cascade of gain, noise figure, IP3, P1dB and sensitivity; load Touchstone files and compare parts on rectangular or Smith axes. Nothing is uploaded.

150
unit tests on the RF math
2 + 1
parallel agents + me
0
bytes uploaded
MB-101In use on real hardware
Gain-compression and two-tone linearity plots from the bench app, running against its simulated instruments.

PA Characterization Bench

A browser-driven RF power-amplifier test bench. It runs a vector signal generator, a signal analyzer and a 4-channel supply over raw SCPI, and turns a morning of manual measurements into one button per test.

71
commits in 12 days
107
independent math checks
7 → 0
SCPI errors per sweep after bring-up
MB-102Rebuilt in the browser · on the RF Workbench
The browser version of the viewer comparing two units of a synthetic bandpass filter.

S-Parameter Viewer

A VNA-style Touchstone viewer for comparing parts. Overlay up to ten .sNp files, one-click return loss, insertion loss or isolation, snap-to-point markers, cross-grid trace math, and slide-ready export.

1
day, first commit to deployed
10
files overlaid at once
N-port
any port count

02.2

Hardware

Boards and mechanical parts, from mains-rated PCBs to parametric 3D-printed designs.

MB-201PCB routed · at layout review gate
3D render of the routed main board. The mains side with relays, triacs, fuse clips and MOV runs along the top; the low-voltage side with the ESP32-S3, USB-C and Ethernet sits lower left.

4-Zone Fermentation Controller

A mains-switching brewery controller designed as a real, manufacturable product. ESP32-S3, four triac heater zones and four relay pump zones, 288 parts on a 4-layer board. Taken from written brief to routed PCB in three days, with AI agents driving KiCad.

288
components, 9 schematic sheets
43
logged design decisions
0 / 0
ERC errors / warnings
MB-202Print-ready · headed for MakerWorld
Photoreal render of printed tokens in four sizes on a felt mat.

Parametric Tabletop Token System

A fully parametric OpenSCAD system of 3D-printable grid tokens, with 47 base tiles that drop flush into ring frames for Large, Huge and Gargantuan creatures. The build script exports and verifies 191 meshes, and a Blender scene built entirely in code renders the product shots.

191
meshes built and verified
47
tiles fit one print bed
4.0
mm, flush assembly
MB-203Print-ready
Exploded render showing how the cottage's gables, side walls and roof slide and snap together.

Two-Door Guinea Pig Cottage

A parametric, 3D-printable hideout designed around animal behavior and printability. Five parts, no fasteners, no glue, no supports, and a build script that refuses to package a non-manifold mesh.

0
supports, fasteners or glue
1.27
kg PETG, five prints
0.35
mm dovetail fit

02.3

Software

Products in real use: AI vision and voice, invoicing, e-commerce.

MB-301Friends-and-family pilot
InVinetory desktop cellar table listing wines with vintage, region, bottle count, location and readiness, using an invented demo cellar.

InVinetory

Point a phone at a wine label and it identifies the bottle, researches it once for every cellar, and files it in a shared household inventory. Describe dinner out loud and a voice sommelier picks from bottles you actually own.

13/14
labels right on real photos
2.7 s
median read, ~0.4¢ each
2 days
for all 6 planned phases
MB-302In daily use · SaaS in development
TymTracker dashboard with unbilled hours, outstanding and collected totals, open invoices and this week's hours, using made-up demo data.

TymTracker

A time-tracking and invoicing app I built when my invoicing tool's price went from about $100 to about $2,000 a year. It runs my own invoicing today, and is being rebuilt as a multi-tenant SaaS product.

20×
price increase avoided
40
tests, incl. auth against Postgres
22 → 8
npm audit advisories
MB-303Live
The Tensor3D storefront home page: "Built for the people who build." with a Voron printer photo.

Tensor3D Storefront

A self-hosted e-commerce platform that replaced Shopify for my 3D-printer parts shop. It covers storefront, checkout, oversell protection, shipping labels, admin and analytics, and I migrated in four years of order history.

10
days of build, 32 commits
983
historical orders migrated
17 → 0
audit findings open

02.4

Infrastructure

The self-hosted platform everything else runs on.

MB-401Running

The Homelab

A five-node Proxmox cluster with 218 TB of ZFS, a segmented 10 GbE network, and around twenty services. It hosts every app on this site, and it's run as documented infrastructure with an AI agent that keeps the runbook current.

5
cluster nodes, ~20 VMs
218 TB
RAIDZ2, grown in place
6
VLANs, IPS on each
MB-402In daily use

Vordr Camera Viewer

A self-hosted, view-only live viewer for eight PoE cameras that installs on an iPhone home screen. WebRTC with no transcoding, pinch-zoom and PTZ, and private cameras that unlock with a passkey. Nothing leaves the private network.

8
cameras, live
~4%
CPU for 5120×1920 + audio
0
requests leave the network
03Method

Flight-hardware discipline, applied to AI agents.

The habits that keep flight hardware out of trouble (written requirements, gated reviews, traceable decisions, test like you fly) are what turn AI agents from fast into fast and right.

  1. 1

    Brief

    Requirements, constraints and what "done" means, written before any code or copper.

  2. 2

    Phase gates

    Architecture, parts, schematic, layout. Agents stop at every gate; I approve or send them back.

  3. 3

    Decision log

    Every non-obvious call recorded with the alternatives and the evidence, so no session starts blind.

  4. 4

    Independent review

    Separate agents audit the work: ERC and DRC, mains stress, security, datasheets, math from first principles.

Read the method →
04Try it

RF Workbench

Draw a signal chain and get a live cascade of gain, noise figure, IP3, P1dB and sensitivity at every stage. Load Touchstone files and compare parts on rectangular or Smith axes. Runs entirely in the browser.

Block diagramsCascadeS-parametersSmith chartOpen the workbench →