Pros
The company does not layoff its engineers often, and offers many positions with low levels of responsibility for those looking to coast. The fear of layoffs within the company is often out of proportion. The 401K matches up to 10%, and annual salary raises are provided between 5% and 10%. A free gym membership is offered to the gym next door. The location in Carlsbad, CA is a 10 minute drive to the beach and offers all the fringe benefits of Southern California weather.
Cons
For an RF engineer, Viasat offers little skill development and technical growth in the field. The work consists of chain analysis via excel spreadsheets, PWA layout, RF testing, and working with production. The RF testing is the largest portion, with the majority of the time spent in a lab doing RF Tech level testing (eg measuring RF parameters across multiple samples using spectrum analyzers, network analyzers, etc). For a design engineer, this work isn't appropriate and doesn't develop skills in creativity and analysis inherent in RF design. There is almost no work with critical RF simulation tools such as ADS, Momentum, HFSS, etc: Ansoft Designer is used for lumped filter analysis, however this work doesn't develop any useful simulation skills. Simulation is never taken seriously because none of the models are accurate. Skills in design aren't developed among its junior RF engineers: The framework consists of a handful of senior RF engineers (+10 years) who primarily do a design such as a transceiver chain using excel, then pass the PWAs for testing to the junior engineers. The junior engineers then debug issues (usually involving a schematic error) and make measurements across multiple samples to support the design. The designs use off the shelf components for 1 - 2 GHz transceivers , with the analysis and component selection typically rehashed. Management has serious flaws at ViaSat: The managers are picked by seniority over ability to manage the project and its engineers. This results in managers who do not handle the project and its engineers with dexterity, but rather go to war with forcing them to meet unrealistic deadlines. ViaSat wins its contracts by underbidding the competition with an unrealistic schedule, then puts aggressive managers who can push the RF engineers to work long hours. On a prototype project, expect to work 12 hour days taking measurements over several months. I'll close with an RF engineer I worked with recently. In order to meet the project deadlines, he would leave work before his kids woke up, and arrive after they'd gone to bed. He consistently worked 12 hour days in the lab doing testing and tuning, developing no new skills but rather working to keep his job. This is not atypical at Viasat. If you plan to interview here, dig deep with questions to the lower level RF engineers to find out the full story.
