Senior Autonomy Systems Engineer

Caterpillar•Mossville, IL

21h•$112,710 - $183,140•Onsite

About The Position

When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it. The Site System Senior Systems Engineer supports site level autonomy products such as command, fleet, terrain, productivity, and task autonomy that integrate machines, operators, and site systems to enable coordinated, safe, and optimized operations across mining, quarry & aggregates, and construction environments. The role provides technical leadership and cross cutting systems engineering expertise across multiple industries and product lines within the Site Technology ecosystem. This role is accountable for defining, integrating, and governing reusable system capabilities across surface, underground, and construction domains. At the Senior level, this engineer operates with a high degree of autonomy, influences architectural direction, and serves as a technical authority across teams. The role emphasizes experience-based judgment, long-term system integrity, and alignment to enterprise systems engineering practices while enabling product and industry teams to execute efficiently and consistently.

Requirements

Systems Engineering Experience: Demonstrated experience leading system requirements development and management across complex, multi-team or multi-product environments.
Proven experience defining system architecture, interfaces, and integration strategies that scale across platforms and industries.
Experience making architectural trade-offs and influencing technical direction beyond a single team or product.
Industry Knowledge : Applied experience within CI or RI industry groups, including understanding of industry trends, regulatory considerations, and operational constraints.
Ability to apply industry experience pragmatically to diverse and ambiguous technical situations, rather than relying solely on documented standards.
Problem Solving: Extensive experience recognizing, anticipating, and resolving complex system, organizational, or process problems.
Ability to apply engineering judgment in situations with incomplete data, competing priorities, and long-term consequences.
Application Development Tools: Hands-on experience with application and system development tools, architecture, and modeling approaches used to design and validate large-scale systems.
Ability to select and apply appropriate tools based on problem context rather than tool familiarity alone.
Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or other relevant engineering related field.

Nice To Haves

Proven experience as a Systems Engineer; creating requirements on software/hardware product development projects.
Strong experience with Process/Solution engineering
Prior experience in Construction or Mining preferred
Previous experience with onboard/embedded software development preferred
Experience with CAT Products and Tools preferred

Responsibilities

Provide senior-level systems engineering leadership that is independent of any single industry or product, driving reuse, consistency, and architectural coherence across site, machine, and technology domains.
Own and evolve system-level requirements, interfaces, and architectural guidance for common domains such as surface management, operator management, asset management, material management, safety, and assignment & optimization, ensuring solutions scale across industries.
Lead the design, validation, and trade-off analysis of system architectures, applying experience to balance technical rigor, product constraints, and long-term platform sustainability.
Influence and contribute to system engineering artifacts for site solutions (e.g., mining, quarry & aggregates, construction), with accountability for cross-solution alignment rather than isolated deliverables.
Act as a technical partner and reviewer for industry-specific teams (surface hauling, underground, construction, quarry & aggregates), ensuring solutions align to common system patterns and prevent unnecessary architectural divergence.
Lead and participate in technical reviews, architectural governance forums, and roadmap planning, applying senior judgment to protect long-term system integrity across industries.
Mentor and influence engineers across teams, raising overall systems engineering maturity through guidance, design feedback, and example (without direct people management responsibility).