What does a senior R & D RF research engineer in a large university does, help!

[Vincenzo]

So, I just got this job (off course after some paperwork and other things that take a couple of weeks or so), and I am so anxious and probably terrified because it pays more than I ever thought of making (other than a successful self business).
Is there anyone here who does something similar and who can spare a few minutes to help me with what do they actually do everyday. I was told that eventually most of my work will be remote and they were impressed by my skill set and background that they think I will be able to solve a couple of problems that they are currently dealing with. It is a small group of (mostly) Phds and a smaller group of technicians and junior engineers and physicists and I'm only an EE with a masters but with the highest ham license and none of them was ever a ham.
Thanks in advance

[Stray Electron]

     This seems like a very strange question!  Didn't they post a job listing that stated the job requirement?  And didn't they interview you and you and they discuss the job?

[xrunner]

What does being a HAM have to do with the job?

[coppercone2]

they work in a research group doing some certain thing that involves electronics

have you.. looked at any of their publishings ?

[DaJMasta]

You lead research and development?  I'd imagine it means planning future projects, getting corporate partners, writing grants, writing and editing papers, making the case for filling your lab with expensive equipment, etc.

For such a senior position, it's odd to just ask what to do - haven't you encountered others in similar roles or worked with people doing things that fall into that category?  In the last lab you worked in, what did the person leading the lab do?  Probably not a time in front of the VNA and probably a lot more time than the average lab member talking to higher ups at the university and the wider world.

[Psi]

"Senior R&D RF research Engineer"   is one thing and, is somewhat answerable.
But once you add "at a large university" all bets are off.

Being employed by a university vs 'in the industry' can be quite different.

I wouldn't stress too much about the 'high pay', that is simply to do with the combination of Senior + RnD + RF Engineer.     Sometimes it's easy to become nervous because the money is so large you tend to think "They must be expecting an INSANE AMOUNT OF WORK out of me".
That is almost never the case, the position simply commands that much money due to being so specialized.

[coppercone2]

You lead research and development?  I'd imagine it means planning future projects, getting corporate partners, writing grants, writing and editing papers, making the case for filling your lab with expensive equipment, etc.

For such a senior position, it's odd to just ask what to do - haven't you encountered others in similar roles or worked with people doing things that fall into that category?  In the last lab you worked in, what did the person leading the lab do?  Probably not a time in front of the VNA and probably a lot more time than the average lab member talking to higher ups at the university and the wider world.

i think you mean director here.

senior is going to be reading peoples lab reports or even making complicated ones themselves

you might get asked to chime in on some meeting for money but that is probobly special people that focus on 'communications' skills (able to bullshit someone into thinking there won't be a overrun).


Thats the fun world of some how putting value metrics on the progress of something you can't sell ? Make some random ass experiment (usually irrelevant) scheduled to some kind of important deadline just to make it seem like there is a sense of progress. And some kind of useless preliminary data too so a bar graph can move to some kind of beat.   

then in reality either the guy knew exactly what to make or do within the first week and got creatively managed for a year or figured it out 10 days before some kind of legal contract thing, not using ANY of the stuff that had been advertised as progress.


oh, and then someone will use whatever managment BS you made up to try to run a different project (quite possibly into the ground), after which the process is reorganized (really it coin tosses)


R&D planning timelines are the most insane thing in the world. I feel like if its its super organized and shit, it means that someone already has the god damn solution and their just biding their time to present it, there is no research going on!



Anyone else feel like its the same thing for video game development? They start getting all the management shit 'in order' because the industry is aging and all the games start sucking because you can tell they went through a check list of crap to do to maintain some kind of acceptable level of feedback with management and have a time table. I bet its like numbers and proportions that are just taken from other people that are mostly irrelevant. That is why companies love making remasters of games, its just going through a checklist of stuff to draw with more polygons.  :'(


Back on topic, I feel that anyway in any technical group, there is gonna be the people that focus on external communications that involve 'deals', and the technical people. Usually they don't do anything else, even if there is a degree. Thats a choice you need to make. Its still like sales. Small company, or a group in a big company, you end up having a microchasm of sales.



DO they want your HAM skills because you can talk shop with the interested or do they need someone to do electronics and they actually want your practical skills?

[mtwieg]

That title is too vague to give any answers on what the work is like. When I was in academia I learned that official roles are often dictated by strange quirks regarding funding or immigrant status. For example a grant may specifically allow for funding a staff scientist salary, but not a postdoc, so congrats to a postdoc who suddenly got promoted to staff scientist!

You may be expected to write journal publications and maybe even grant applications. Or you might be a glorified technician tasked with making test fixtures or repairing equipment (though if it's mostly remote this is unlikely).

These expectations should have been made fairly clear during the interview/hiring process. If not, somebody screwed up big time.

[tszaboo]

You might be suffering from something called "impostor syndrome". It's OK, if you can do the job effectively, you deserve that compensation. If you cannot, they will let you know very quickly.

[coppice]

The weird part of this is the salary apparently being high. Universities are notorious for spending as little as possible on their people, unless they are part of the inner sanctum.

[radiolistener]

Is there anyone here who does something similar and who can spare a few minutes to help me with what do they actually do everyday.

if you've got a good paid job and you're don't know what is your responsibility, most of all you are catch into a honey trap. There is a high risk that you're working for a big mafia, be careful because messing with the bad guys you will catch into a big troubles and even big salary cannot help you. In order to avoid it, just don't have any kind of deal with government officials. Just look for a job for a private company which don't receive government orders and subsidies and where you good understand what are you doing and what is your responsibilities. The salary may be not the best, but you will be happy with your job and can learn new things.

[coppercone2]

glorified technician

are you the guy jamming frayed 12 gauge wall cable into 0.250 connectors with the duct tape making fun of the test setup designers?


the 'yank on stuff' methodology disappears if someone engineers the test fixture


my favorite 'don't need no connections guy' things include
-tumble weed of electrical tape around nut and bolt clamping together two wires (if someone needs more then 5 amps)
-solder splice cable coral (looks like a hedge hog riding on a snake. might have electrical tape flags on the solder joints if your lucky)
-alligator clips with wire jammed into the back, sometimes covered with vinyl tubing segments
-crimp ball (when you use 25 fast ons to splice together two cables because no one can be bothered to find a proper splice)
-really complicated stuff made with uniform color wire
-romex for data
-dsub wire sculptures


when your scared to try to take it out of the tupperware someone put it in


its over 9000 henries parasitic inductance!

[mtwieg]

are you the guy jamming frayed 12 gauge wall cable into 0.250 connectors with the duct tape making fun of the test setup designers?


the 'yank on stuff' methodology disappears if someone engineers the test fixture

Uh I'm pretty sure you've got the wrong idea. By "glorified technician" I mean someone who is functionally a technician but has a fancy-sounding title (usually because they're good at what they do). My dad was a chemistry professor who kept a postdoc around for many years because he was so good at maintaining equipment and running experiments, though he didn't really publish or do other normal "academic" activities. Strange eastern European guy, used to call my dad "master" and would give us home-baked bread.

[coppercone2]

I don't see it too much different then a engineer. For some reason when you put the parts on a piece of fiber glass or ceramic you are a engineer but if its wires and or sheet metal its a technician?


I don't think its any easier if you want it good. And IMO its more physics analysis.


Test fixtures are super critical to data. Ever see what kind of trash gets put out by a engineer with expensive equipment that does not have a well engineered test fixture? To do anything with vibration, temperature, chemicals, rf... its basically engineering all the way. everything has to be compatible or understood, you can't just have a "lower complexity" area in the design hierarchy where someone can start guessing, that leads to unacceptable compromises to a good design. And isolating the supposed technician from the details, leads to such a burden of documentation , explanation and instructions, that it becomes extremely inefficient.  the good ones that "know what you mean" basically means "they have similar knowledge of the area to you". otherwise you just hear the standard those guys don't know what their doing! rant.

I think alot of this.. .classification of people has to do with lowering operating costs!


usually technician means that its almost robotic, where they follow a clearly documented line by line ISO process for assembly or measurement where the tolerated amount of deviation is precisely zlich. I don't think their looking for that in a R&D group. Not a good one. Unless they have volume. Then you might get a 'technician' job with a manager that just runs the technicians. Otherwise IMO its engineering in disguise!

the thing to inform you would be to find out what kind of volume of very repetitive work that there is for the groups data. I could see a technician technician being on something like a project that really alot of networked stuff. hundreds of transponders or something. Or a group that's trying to get a mass production process to work, where you can get hundreds of samples. But I would be surprised if that went off into a university, usually its private corporate lab that has that kind of work... universities are supposed to be more vertical then horizontal. Years ago I did see zigbee projects or mesh network projects that looked like they would require really standard technician work where you get basically a ISO on how to fill out a report.


the other thing it could be is for QC, if they need something like samples tested because the manufacturers they have access to are sending in dodgy crap that needs to be vetted. Then it could be like "yo make sure all this alumina sheet is actually low porosity. your gonna be measuring dielectric constants all day to see if it meets some industrial specification." But IMO that is NOT a group you wanna be in if they try to in-source like testing for materials standards instead of getting a university grade supplier. like a chinese professor thats using alibaba lol, I heard of that kind of dodgy shit happening before but usually it gets contested unless everyone in that group is just riding the wave. IMO thats not being part of the group, because another group could easily bypass it. Its more like being a contractor for a cheap skate. I think like the department head would find that embarrassing if he had to explain it. thats the kind of thing your supposed to be able to get away from in university vs corporate!  and even in corporate if your boss is smart he will try to minimize that kinda BS. It does NOT ensure confidence when someone says "well.... we test those", you know, because you can easily not test them and say you did.

[wasedadoc]

(everything= electricity, wired and wireless communications, the vacuum tubes and the transistors, cars, airplanes, spaceships, computers, the internet, televisions, radars, MatLab, C++, Windows, satellites, I can go forever)

Many of those were not invented in the USA.

[coppice]

(everything= electricity, wired and wireless communications, the vacuum tubes and the transistors, cars, airplanes, spaceships, computers, the internet, televisions, radars, MatLab, C++, Windows, satellites, I can go forever)

• Electricity: not an invention. If you mean electrical generation, that was Michael Faraday in the UK.
• Wired and Wireless communication: Wired is a bit vague. It kind of grew out of innovations in several places. Wireless was first demonstrated by Jagadish Chandra Bose in India, although his contribution largely ignored, and people usually refer to Marconi who was in Europe.
• Vacuum tube: The first one was demonstrated by Fleming at my old college, UCL, in London.
• Transistor: Pretty solid american invention. Even much of the precursor work was from the US.
• Cars: Quite famously Germany, with great stories about Mrs Benz's adventures getting the public to take them seriously. The big US input here was not cars but scalable mass production, which they took way beyond anything in the UK or Germany.
• Airplanes: That was a long road through various forms of glider, but the first powered airplane was American
• Spaceships: USSR
• Computers: UK
• Internet: The actual internet we use today was from the US, but it amalgamated a lot of precursors from all over the place.
• Television: UK for both the invention of mechanical and no moving parts TV, plus commercial deployment. Quite a few inputs to the complete signal chain came from the US
• Radar: UK
• Matlab: Not exactly an invention, but US
• C++: A US derivative of C and Smalltalk. C is a derivative of BCPL. Smalltalk is American. BCPL came from Cambridge University.
• Windows: The real master here was Doug Engelbart, an American. He was one of the true visionaries, who could see where things would go long before his contemporaries could catch up.
• Satellites: USSR

[Bud]

@OP who is your role going to report to? If it is not your boss who is managing budgets, vendors, develops strategies, interfaces with the senior leadership in non-technical language, leads the team's alignment with the organization's objectives, then it is what you will be doing. Forget about spending time at the bench.

[Bud]

Dude, find out where in the orgchart your role is sitting, people will then should be able to give you a better advice.

[LaserSteve]

I was  Part time Technical Staff, then  Technician, then an acting Post Doc (Without the  Doc!)  then made it to "hard" money as an Instrumentation technician, then a Senior Technician at a mediocre research school with 22,000 Students before its decline.

       My advice, unless taking advantage of the free education for you or your family, is work there 4-5 years and move on or move laterally to administration.   Learn everything you can, teach your self new things, take advantage of the on-line and off-line libraries.  Unless you are getting the valuable  old school State Employees Retirement as a reason to stay, they will work you hard  like a graduate student. You will learn things and do things you will never see in industry, and depending on the research field, you may make many people's lives better.

  If your unmarried, welcome to the graduate student happy hunting ground.  A  "Proverbs 31" smart wife who can make money,  plan, learn, teach her children well,  and be loyal is a joy of life.

     I have no regrets doing the one on one teaching, the outreach to local schools mentoring for Intel ISEF . God only knows the impact of the filtration, structural materials, and wound treatment teams I've been on.  Not everyone gets to say they escorted three Noble Prize winners around campus, and had one take me to lunch. The Secretary of the Treasury I once escorted, , pulled me aside and said both he and I probably had better things to do then arrange the public meeting for his visit to our famed school of whatever....  I probably should have taken up the U.S. Marshal's and Secret Service  offer of a move to DC for R&D.   I probably should have taken the USAF up on a move to AF Research.. 

Here's the deal, unless you pull off getting a Masters, or use contacts you meet on the job to eventually move back to industry, you'll likely be trapped in Academia. Working for one or two well funded groups is fun. Being "promoted" to handle the needs of a whole  "Department" or a "College" is not fun, but rather serious and highly political.  At that point you gain unbelievable responsibilities, and might just wish you had  been  a PhD for the salary difference.

I have a resume that HR people can't understand.  I go to interviews and corporate interviewers who have spent their entire lives working on one narrow topic have NO idea how I could have worked on as many instruments,  technologies, and product development projects that I have on the resume.

Technician is not a great title for advancement.   Once upon a time in the 50s,60s,70s, it was. Not now.

Spend a few years sucking up every thing you can, enjoy the limitless access to publications and technology.  Being around young people keeps your mind sharp.

Get a few publications or a Patent or two.

Then Bail Out... 

Because you may get downsized, the new Department Chair  may not like you, or in my case, people did not have enough children 18 years ago and even the permanent  funding dried up.  One way or another, expect a minimum fifty hour week, and expect, if your any good, to not be able to  walk down the hall without being flooded  with more project requests..

Make sure your on "Hard" or "Permanent" funding, "Soft Money" is fun for a while, but I assure you there are dry spells of no funding.

If your going to a "Big Ten", Research I or Research II school,  or a MIT,  Harvard or Stanford, just go.    I'd be weary of "State" and small private schools right now...  Academic funding is abysmal right now, US Nationwide, and even perhaps world wide,  unless the school has a good endowment.

Its fun, but don't stay too long. 


If your school is not in Ohio, PM with your potential Profs names and I will pull you some papers to read if any of them have made it to open source.   I'm not intending to move out of my home just yet.  Hence the "Ohio".    I would not answer where the job is in public.  Hint "Scifinder Scholar"

Don't worry about what you will do. Unless your school is very, very, very well funded, you will do everything.  Most, but not all Graduate students have not been in industry, and even fewer can even program or build basic things.  Learn Glassblowing, Machining, Microscopy, of all kinds.    Enjoy the Academic licenses of CAD, CAM, CAE etc.

Don't wait too long to reply. The technical job market is actually horrible right now, unless you are in  IT, Biology or Medicine.

Signed, The Old, Unemployable,  Ghost of Research Past...      Who stayed too long.

One last warning, you have to know the Project better then the students.  You have to think out of the box about how to teach them what YOU know.

If someone has offered you this position, be Honored, Academic Techs are actually far  rarer then Rock Stars...


Steve   (Formerly Senior Technician,  Instrumentation  )

[LaserSteve]

We had a phone chat.  He'll be fine.  Really humble, highly skilled person was in the right area at the right and said the right thing.


 :

[LaserSteve]

As was explained to you in a PM, your being vetted/screened to work on a confidential project.  Do the scut work, take the project,  earn the trust, and play ball.

Steve