Job Description & Details
This is a solid systems engineering gig focused on designing, simulating, and field-testing autonomous surface vehicles and robotic systems. If you want to work on disruptive autonomy tech for maritime or defense applications without getting bogged down in endless enterprise meetings, this hands-on role gives you a great mix of applied research and real product delivery.
What You'll Actually Be Doing
You will spend your days driving the full-lifecycle engineering design for unmanned systems (UxS). This means you'll be knee-deep in requirements analysis, systems modeling using SysML, conducting trade studies, and setting up integration plans and test verifications. You'll work closely with multidisciplinary teams—from program managers and technical leads to hands-on technicians—and you'll regularly present your systems engineering work products to both internal teams and external customers during milestone reviews.
The Core Tech Stack
You need to be fluent in Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) workflows and comfortable with tools like Cameo/MagicDraw, DOORS for requirements management, and JIRA for tracking. Experience working in a Department of Defense (DoD) environment and dealing with hardware/software integration is heavily preferred. Having an active Secret clearance or eligibility for one is a non-negotiable baseline here, so make sure your clearance status is front and center.
Interview Expectations
The hiring manager will likely grill you on how you handle requirements churn and traceability using tools like DOORS or Cameo. They want to see that you can bridge the gap between abstract system requirements and concrete hardware/software integration challenges. Be ready to walk them through a specific trade study you've led in the past and explain how you balanced competing technical constraints under tight deadlines.
Application Advice
To get past the ATS, make sure your resume explicitly highlights keywords like 'SysML', 'Cameo', 'DOORS', 'requirements derivation', and 'system integration'. Don't just list these tools; write concise bullet points describing how you used MBSE methodologies to drive a complex hardware/software project from design to verification. Explicitly state your Secret clearance status near the top to ensure your application gets immediate attention.