Senior / Principal Systems Engineer

Anzu Partners•Waltham, MA

2d•Onsite

About The Position

GelSight is hiring a Senior or Principal Systems Engineer to own the process connecting customer and product needs to system-level requirements and verified system capability. The role defines product requirements, allocates them across hardware and software, and verifies through objective evidence that shipped products meet them. The engineer works alongside Product Architects and hardware, gel, and software engineers. At the Principal level, the role spans the product portfolio and establishes systems engineering as a discipline at GelSight. The position focuses on complex opto-electro-mechanical metrology systems, including requirements for accuracy, repeatability, uncertainty, and throughput; traceability between requirements and demonstrated capability; verification and validation; test-system development; measurement system analysis; uncertainty budgeting; statistical methods; and technical leadership of system-level FMEAs. Principal-level responsibilities additionally include portfolio-wide ownership, practice development, technical authority, mentorship, and executive communication.

Requirements

BS in Engineering (Systems, Electrical, Mechanical, Optical, or related).
12+ years in systems engineering or multidisciplinary product development of complex electro-optical, opto-mechanical, or precision instrument systems.
Demonstrated experience writing, managing, and flowing down system-level requirements on shipped products, with requirement-to-verification traceability.
Working command of verification and validation methods, measurement uncertainty, error budgets, and statistical data analysis.
Demonstrated ability to design and build test systems to verify system performance.
Hands-on experience with optical components, alignment, and test instrumentation.
Hands-on experience leading FMEAs (system and/or design) on complex products; ability to facilitate cross-functional FMEA sessions and drive mitigations to closure in partnership with Quality on process and documentation.
Proven ability to translate between customer needs, system requirements, and subsystem design language across disciplines.
For Principal-level consideration: 15+ to 20+ years in systems engineering or multidisciplinary product development of complex electro-optical, opto-mechanical, or precision instrument systems, including technical leadership of multiple products from concept through shipped, verified release.
For Principal-level consideration: a track record of owning system-level requirements and their flow-down on shipped products, with requirement-to-verification traceability built or managed.
For Principal-level consideration: in-depth knowledge of verification and validation strategy, measurement uncertainty, error budgets, and statistical capability analysis.
For Principal-level consideration: experience establishing or running an FMEA program and training engineers in the method.
For Principal-level consideration: ability to drive technical direction across disciplines and organizational levels without direct authority, and communicate system risk to executives in decision-ready form.

Nice To Haves

MS or PhD in Engineering.
Background in surface metrology, dimensional metrology, or precision measurement instruments.
Experience establishing systems engineering practices at a small or scaling company.
Experience in aerospace, defense, or other regulated precision-manufacturing industries.
Working proficiency with Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) methods and tools for requirements modeling, allocation, and traceability.

Responsibilities

Translate product and customer needs into complete, testable system-level requirements for accuracy, repeatability, uncertainty, and throughput.
Maintain traceability between system requirements and demonstrated system capability, quantify gaps, and drive the roadmap to close them.
Allocate system-level requirements across opto-mechanical hardware, gel, and software, with clear interfaces and error budgets, and into test design including calibration plates, fixtures, and reference test standards.
Author verification and validation plans and acceptance criteria, and gate releases on objective evidence that system requirements are met.
Design and build test systems to verify system performance and create system performance metrics that track to overall system capability.
Identify the system performance metrics that drive system capability and use Measurement System Analysis (MSA), uncertainty budgeting, and statistical methods to quantify capability.
Facilitate cross-functional system-level FMEAs as the engineering lead in partnership with Quality; own technical content, failure modes, risk ranking, and mitigations, and ensure FMEA findings drive requirements, error budgets, and test coverage.
Partner with the Systems and Software Architect and provide hardware, gel, software, and mechanical engineers with allocated requirements and acceptance criteria they can design and test against.
At the Principal level, own system-level requirements and capability models across the product portfolio.
At the Principal level, establish systems engineering practices, including requirements standards, review gates, traceability tooling, and design-review rigor.
At the Principal level, serve as a company-level technical authority on system performance, mentor engineers across disciplines, and communicate system risk to executives in decision-ready form.