Senior Systems Engineer
About The Position
Thomas Global Systems designs, manufactures, and supports high-integrity aviation and defense electronics, with locations in Sydney, Australia, and Irvine, California. The Senior Systems Engineer is based fully onsite in Irvine, California, and reports to the Engineering Manager, Systems. The role provides technical leadership across the full lifecycle of avionics and defense electronic systems. It defines and manages system requirements and architecture, guides multidisciplinary engineering teams, and serves as a key technical interface with customers and certification or airworthiness authorities. The engineer ensures systems meet performance, safety, reliability, security, and regulatory requirements from concept through delivery and sustainment. This is a varied, fast-paced role with an innovative, respected provider of mission-critical aerospace and defense products. The company offers competitive remuneration and a comprehensive benefits package, alongside a skilled and motivated team committed to innovation, collaboration, and national security outcomes.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Systems, Electrical, Aerospace, Computer or Software Engineering, or a related field.
- Typically ten or more years of progressive systems engineering experience in avionics, aerospace, or defense electronic systems.
- Experience in FMECA analyses, including probability and reliability calculations using IAW MIL-HDBK-217F or the FIDES Reliability Methodology.
- Demonstrated technical ownership of requirements and architecture, interface management, trade studies, integration, and verification and validation.
- Strong knowledge of civil aviation certification and/or defense airworthiness, qualification, and customer requirements.
- Ability to lead technical reviews, guide multidisciplinary teams, mentor engineers, and work with customers, suppliers, and certification or airworthiness authorities.
- Experience with requirements management tools such as DOORS, Jama, Polarion, Jira, or equivalent systems.
- Strong analytical, decision-making, problem-solving, communication, and technical-writing skills, including professional written communication and report writing.
Nice To Haves
- Master's degree in a relevant field.
- Experience in both civil aviation certification and defense airworthiness environments.
- Professional certification such as CSEP.
Responsibilities
- Lead development of system requirements, architectures, interfaces, and operational concepts for avionics and defense electronic systems.
- Own hardware, firmware, and software requirements allocation, trade studies, major technical decisions, and bidirectional traceability.
- Control electrical, mechanical, firmware, software, and data interfaces and interface documentation across internal and external organizations.
- Direct component and line-replaceable-unit integration into aircraft, ground, vehicle, or mission systems, and resolve cross-disciplinary issues.
- Set verification and validation strategies, plans, procedures, and acceptance criteria, ensuring coverage of allocated requirements.
- Lead system integration, safety analyses, environmental qualification, acceptance testing, anomaly disposition, and verification closure.
- Lead or support civil certification and military airworthiness or customer qualification, coordinating technical matters with customers and authorities.
- Apply relevant FAA or EASA requirements, ARP4754A, DO-160, DO-178C, DO-254, and MIL-STDs, and ensure compliance evidence is complete.
- Plan systems engineering work and estimates, manage risks and opportunities, and lead reviews such as SRR, PDR, CDR, and TRR.
- Provide technical direction, resolve issues, support change and configuration control, and contribute to supplier oversight and proposals.
- Lead root-cause analysis and corrective action for development, production, and field issues, and guide product sustainment activities.
- Assess change and obsolescence impacts on requirements, interfaces, verification, qualification, certification, and field performance.
- Review and approve requirements, architecture data, interface documents, test documentation, and reports.
- Coordinate multidisciplinary teams, mentor engineers, and communicate technical status, risks, and recommendations to leadership and customers.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
