How To Become A Radar Engineer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a radar engineer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Radar is an incredibly useful system that uses radio waves to track movement. This system is the backbone of weather predictions, airplane navigation, military operations, and more. Radar engineers are the highly skilled people responsible for building and maintaining radar systems.

Radar engineers need to have a variety of technical skills in order to get the job done. They develop complex mathematical algorithms, fix technical bugs, and test the quality of the radar system. Often radar engineers are expected to work around the clock to make sure that radar doesn't fail during a sensitive operation.

The work of a radar engineer is very hard, and the road to becoming one isn't easy either. Most radar engineers have at least a bachelor's degree in engineering, and many go on to earn a master's as well. Depending on the employer, some radar engineers may need an extensive security clearance to do their jobs. The things radar discovers are often very sensitive.

ScoreRadar EngineerUS Average

Salary

7.6

Avg. Salary $99,242

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

5.7

Growth rate 3%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

6.2

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.18%

Asian 14.34%

Black or African American 4.90%

Hispanic or Latino 11.45%

Unknown 4.72%

White 64.41%

Gender

female 17.57%

male 82.43%

Age - 44

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 44

Stress level

5.7

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.3

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

7.2

Work life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a radar engineer

Explore radar engineer education requirements

Most common radar engineer degrees

Bachelor's

67.2 %

Master's

15.6 %

Associate

9.4 %

Start to develop specific radar engineer skills

Skills	Percentages
RF	18.35%
MATLAB	17.86%
Algorithms	15.65%
C++	14.16%
SAR	8.82%

Complete relevant radar engineer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-2 years on post-employment, on-the-job training. New radar engineers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a radar engineer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real radar engineer resumes.

Research radar engineer duties and responsibilities

Manage the day-to-day log collection activities of source devices that send log data to SIEM IBM Qradar.
Lead technology teams charge with full life cycle development processes involving system requirements and system architecture.
Analyze signal processing algorithms for radar SAR data.
Modele performance in MATLAB, C/C++, and FORTRAN.

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