Senior Systems Engineer

AEye, Inc•Pleasanton, CA

About The Position

AEye is seeking a Senior Systems Engineer to drive requirements, system architecture, performance analysis, and functional safety work for its lidar and variants. The role translates customer and product needs into verifiable system and subsystem requirements, defines system KPIs, analyzes performance data, contributes to system architecture and interface documentation, and supports functional safety and cybersecurity activities from concept through production. The engineer works across architecture, hardware, software, firmware, and mechanical teams to maintain consistency among requirements, design, verification, and interfaces. The role also supports program system targets in partnership with engineering, program management, and business development. It contributes to prototype-to-production transition, including production integration, design-for-x, and documentation required by automotive quality and qualification standards. Test plan authoring and test execution are owned by the test and validation teams, not this role.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, Physics, Applied Physics, Optics, Mechatronics, or a related field.
At least 5 years of systems engineering experience on optoelectronic or sensor products, preferably lidar or active depth sensing, in automotive, aerospace, or industrial markets.
Strong requirements engineering skills, including writing clear, verifiable requirements with verification methods and acceptance criteria, decomposing system targets into subsystem requirements, and maintaining traceability.
Hands-on experience with at least one requirements management tool, such as DOORS, Jama, Polarion, or Codebeamer.
Experience defining and documenting system architectures and interfaces, including hardware/software partitioning and interface control documents covering electrical and data interfaces such as Automotive Ethernet, CAN, SPI, and I2C.
Hands-on experience with at least one MBSE or architecture modeling tool, such as IBM Rhapsody, Capella, Cameo, or Enterprise Architect.
Strong grounding in system physics, including lasers and device physics, optics, and signal processing, as well as optical, electrical, mechanical, and thermal aspects of system design.
Working knowledge of structured product development and quality processes and standards, such as ISO 9001, V-Model, ASPICE, ISO 26262, and AEC-Q, and ability to contribute to functional safety work within them.
Experience collaborating across architecture, hardware, software, firmware, and mechanical teams to develop system and subsystem specifications and resolve interface issues.
Strong technical documentation skills across requirements, specifications, architecture descriptions, interface control documents, verification criteria, and reports.
Experience defining performance KPIs, building performance models, and analyzing measured data against system targets, with scripting for data analysis; Python is preferred.

Nice To Haves

M.S. or Ph.D. in a related field.
Experience across the full lifecycle of automotive, aerospace, or industrial sensor development and production, from concept and requirements through design, verification, qualification, and launch.
Hands-on experience leading HARA, safety concepts, and safety analyses including FMEA, FMEDA, FTA, and DFA; familiarity with AUTOSAR and MISRA.
Experience with automotive cybersecurity engineering per ISO/SAE 21434 and UN R155, including TARA, cybersecurity concepts, secure boot and secure communication requirements, and coordination with hardware and software security teams.
Familiarity with SOTIF (ISO 21448) and its application to perception sensors.
Functional safety or cybersecurity certification, such as TÜV/SGS Functional Safety Engineer or ISO/SAE 21434 practitioner, or ASPICE assessor training.
Understanding of thermal concepts in sensor system design, including power dissipation and heat paths, thermal budgets and derating, temperature limits, and thermal degradation of optical and electronic performance; ability to interpret thermal simulation results and analyze thermal test data.
Hands-on experience evaluating and characterizing optical or electro-optical subsystems, including prototype bring-up, lab and field testing, and common failure modes.
Experience with sensor calibration and its integration into production.
Experience with sensor fusion, time synchronization such as PTP / IEEE 802.1AS or gPTP, and perception applications.

Responsibilities

Elicit, author, and maintain system requirements based on customer, product, and regulatory inputs.
Decompose system-level targets into clear, verifiable subsystem requirements across electrical, mechanical, firmware, software, and optics, maintaining bidirectional traceability from stakeholder needs to verification results using a requirements management tool.
Contribute to the definition and documentation of the lidar system architecture, including functional decomposition, hardware/software partitioning, and interfaces among optical, electrical, firmware, software, mechanical, and thermal subsystems.
Author and maintain interface control documents for assigned areas, ensure interface definitions remain consistent across disciplines, and support architectural trade studies.
Contribute to functional safety lifecycle activities per ISO 26262, including item definition, HARA, safety goals, functional and technical safety concepts, and safety analyses such as FMEA, FMEDA, FTA, and DFA.
Support cybersecurity concept and TARA activities per ISO/SAE 21434, and SOTIF considerations per ISO 21448, in collaboration with hardware and software teams.
Define verification methods and acceptance criteria for system and subsystem requirements, including requirements derived from environmental and eye-safety standards, and hand them off to test and validation teams.
Review verification evidence to close requirements and maintain the traceability matrix; test plan authoring and execution are handled by test and validation teams.
Serve as a technical systems liaison across architecture, hardware, software, firmware, and mechanical teams; contribute to design reviews, resolve system-level interface, integration, and performance issues, and support customer technical reviews and RFI/RFQ responses.
Support transition of prototypes through R&D validation into production, including production integration, design-for-x, and process and documentation deliverables for automotive quality and qualification standards.
Define system KPIs such as range, accuracy, precision, false alarm rate, and separability; develop physics-based performance models connecting KPIs to subsystem parameters.
Analyze laboratory, field, and customer data against KPIs and requirements, identify root causes of performance gaps, and feed findings into requirements, architecture, and trade studies.