Principal Systems Engineer

EPIQ DESIGN SOLUTIONS, LLC.•Ballenger Creek, MD

1d•$145,000 - $205,000

About The Position

The Principal Systems Engineer provides technical leadership in developing and evolving software-defined radio (SDR) platforms. This emerging role aligns customer needs, product strategy, and technical execution, collaborating with product management, customers, and cross-functional engineering teams to define system requirements, guide architectural decisions, and support programs from early concept through prototype delivery and commercialization. The role requires broad technical understanding of SDR systems, including RF, hardware, firmware, and software, and the ability to translate customer and product needs into clear system definitions. Depending on project needs, the Principal Systems Engineer may also serve as a technical lead for SDR development efforts with defined scope and delivery timelines.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or a related discipline.
At least 15 years of engineering experience, including at least 5 years in radio or RF hardware development.
Broad technical understanding of SDR systems, including RF front ends, digital hardware, firmware, and software.
Strong verbal and written communication skills.
Demonstrated ability to develop and communicate system architectures, block diagrams, and interface definitions.
Experience performing system-level trade studies, requirements definition, and design reviews.
Working knowledge of Python and basic modeling or data analysis techniques.
Ability to manage multiple efforts simultaneously and prioritize across concurrent projects.
Ability to work on U.S. Government contracts, which requires U.S. citizenship.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in Engineering.
Experience supporting customer-funded prototype development followed by internal productization or new product introduction efforts.
Familiarity with customer integration challenges involving RF systems and embedded platforms.

Responsibilities

Collaborate with product management to develop and review technical content for proposals, statements of work, and customer engagements.
Engage with customers and internal product development teams to develop system-level use cases that inform feature scoping and platform direction.
Define and document system- and feature-level requirements for new radio platforms and major capabilities, owning initial definition through handoff to execution teams.
Identify and scope technical trade studies to evaluate architectural, performance, and implementation options.
Support initial project baseline planning by guiding scope, assumptions, and feasibility discussions with subject matter experts.
Balance customer-specific program needs with long-term SDR platform strategy, identifying opportunities for reuse and commonality.
Develop high-level system architectures, including block diagrams and interface definitions, and support critical component selection.
Work with a Technical Lead focused on execution, or serve as the Technical Lead on some projects, to coordinate cross-functional technical efforts.
Support projects through the product lifecycle, from early concept and customer-funded development through NPI, production, fielded support, and product retirement.
Define system-level acceptance and verification approaches, including data acquisition, structuring, and review to validate requirements.
Guide troubleshooting of complex system-level issues and help teams isolate problems to subsystems through structured analysis and test strategy guidance.
Provide technical customer support for integrating SDR products into larger customer systems.
Contribute to developing and continuously improving systems engineering processes, templates, and best practices.
Lead a cross-functional engineering team through SDR hardware and system development efforts.
Identify technical risks and develop and implement mitigation plans.
Work with engineering team members to define development tasks, dependencies, and priorities, and help remove technical blockers.
Establish and track internal technical milestones to support delivery against contract and customer commitments.
Collaborate with project management to keep projects aligned with schedule, budget, and scope.