You'll play with electronics where the shape of every trace on a circuit board matters; where bond wires are inductors, and where the skin effect is waiting around every corner. When you're not learning about new materials and geometries by troubleshooting state-of-the-art pulse generators, you'll be testing your new ideas with a 20 GHz oscilloscope.

That is why you'll need these skills:

• Achieve high output power without sacrificing rise time
• Apply nonlinear transmission lines to pulse generation
• Optimize planar and coaxial transmission lines for pulsed waveforms
• Measure signals with >10 Ghz bandwidth
• Design systems with broadband impedance matching
• Maximize system performance by ferreting out the best components
• Reliability engineering

You'll play with systems where every charge carrier matters, where actively driven guards are the norm, and where the capacitance of your labmates is your noise floor. When you're not learning about leakage current by troubleshooting state-of-the-art gamma spectroscopy detectors, you'll be testing the noise temperature of your latest design.

That is why you'll need these skills:

• Measure signals at the nV and pA levels
• Design precision circuits tolerant of component drift and aging
• Minimize 1/f, Johnson, and shot noise during system use and design
• Prevent EMI, RFI, and microphonics at the board level
• Maximize system performance by ferreting out the best components
• Apply active guarding and shielding
• Reliability engineering

You'll play where optics meets electronics, where photons are a precious resource to be counted one-by-one, and where fractions of a wavelength are the yardstick by which you measure everything else. When you're not learning atmospheric pressure compensation by troubleshooting interferometric measurements, you'll be bringing your new designs to life with a fusion splicer.

That is why you'll need these skills:

• Generate short optical pulses and pulse trains using gain-switched laser diodes
• Compensate for all types of dispersion in fiber optic systems
• Apply photodetectors in unusual configurations to maximize performance
• Ensure that information is preserved when photons and electrons are exchanged
• Create multi-dimensional imaging systems by using all accessible properties of photons
• Harness interference phenomena to measure irregular surfaces to nanometer accuracy
• Reliability engineering

You'll play with imaging systems where information rates are measured in hundreds of GHz, where the speed of light is your biggest problem, and where every photoelectron must be counted. When you're not learning about how to go faster by troubleshooting state-of-the-art streak cameras, you'll be benchmarking your latest design against a femtosecond laser.

That is why you'll need these skills:

• Classical electrodynamics
• Electron optics
• RF and electrostatic acceleration
• Photocathodes
• Ultrafast lasers
• Ultra-high vacuum
• Picosecond electronics
• Electron multipliers
• Direct electron detectors
• Reliability engineering

You'll play where the user meets our hardware; where sometimes the best solution is a touchscreen but sometimes it's a toggle switch; and where you'll finally get to build that pleasurable interface that you've always dreamed of when working in lab. When you're not designing combinational logic, you'll be imagining new workflows that your interface needs to support.

That is why you'll need these skills:

• Imagination and empathy to anticipate and meet users’ needs and expectations
• Digital electronics
• GUI development for embedded Linux
• Microcontroller programming
• Ferreting out the best software
• Graphic design
• Preventing the unexpected