Kratos Defense & Rocket Support Services, Inc. is seeking a senior Systems Engineer with 812 years of experience to lead system-level development, integration, verification, and sustainment activities for complex defense systems. This role requires a seasoned systems thinker with deep experience translating customer needs into technical solutions, guiding multidisciplinary engineering efforts, and maintaining rigorous system-level requirements, architectures, and interfaces throughout the program lifecycle. The ideal candidate demonstrates leadership, technical ownership, strong cross-team collaboration, and the ability to drive clarity in complex engineering environments.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead development, documentation, and sustainment of system-level requirements, specifications, and technical documentation.
- Translate customer and operational needs into clear system requirements and actionable technical solutions.
- Perform advanced requirements analysis, allocation, traceability, and verification planning throughout the system lifecycle.
- Develop and maintain system architectures, functional analyses, high-level designs, and interface definitions for complex systems.
- Provide system-level leadership during integration, verification, validation, qualification, and sustainment activities.
- Coordinate across electrical, mechanical, software, manufacturing, test, and quality engineering teams to ensure system requirements are fully satisfied.
- Lead system-level technical trade studies balancing performance, cost, risk, schedule, and producibility.
- Develop and maintain Interface Control Documents (ICDs) and manage system and subsystem interfaces.
- Develop system-level test plans, procedures, and reports; support and lead integration and test events.
- Participate in formal design reviews, technical interchange meetings, program reviews, and customer engagements.
- Identify system-level risks and lead the development of mitigation strategies.
- Lead troubleshooting and root-cause analysis of system-level issues during development, integration, testing, and production.
- Maintain rigorous requirements traceability from customer inputs through design, integration, verification, and validation.
- Support configuration management, change control, and system baseline documentation.
- Analyze system performance, identify improvement opportunities, and drive system enhancements.
- Prepare high-quality technical reports, specifications, presentations, and customer-facing documentation.
- Provide leadership and mentorship to less-experienced systems engineers and contribute to overall team development.
Keyword: systems engineering, system integration, verification, validation, test processes, clearance
Required Experience:
Required Qualifications
- Bachelors degree in Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related discipline.
- 812 years of progressive systems engineering experience supporting complex defense or mission-critical systems.
- Significant experience with requirements development, analysis, allocation, verification, and validation across the full lifecycle.
- Proven experience developing system architectures and defining/controlling system and subsystem interfaces.
- Strong experience with system integration, verification, validation, and test processes.
- Ability to analyze complex technical problems and develop clear, practical engineering solutions.
- Experience working within multidisciplinary engineering teams and driving cross-functional collaboration.
- Deep understanding of the systems engineering lifecycle and associated processes.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills for communicating with engineering teams, leadership, and customers.
- U.S. Citizenship required.
- Ability to obtain a DoD security clearance; active clearance preferred.
Preferred Qualifications
- Masters degree in Systems Engineering or a related discipline.
- Experience working directly with DoD customers, program offices, or prime contractors.
- Experience with MBSE tools (e.g., Cameo, MagicDraw); helpful but not required.
- Familiarity with applicable DoD standards, including MIL-STD-810, MIL-STD-882, MIL-STD-961, or similar.
- Experience developing system specifications, ICDs, verification matrices, CONOPS, and technical baselines.
- Experience supporting SRR, PDR, CDR, TRR, and FRR design reviews.
- Experience in risk management, reliability, maintainability, and safety engineering.
- Experience supporting integration and test of complex hardware/software systems.
- Experience with configuration management and change control processes.
- Active DoD clearance preferred.
Key Competencies
- Systems engineering leadership and ownership
- Advanced requirements management and traceability
- System architecture and interface control
- Integration, verification, and validation expertise
- Complex problem solving and decision support
- Technical documentation and clear communication
- Risk identification and mitigation
- Trade study development and analysis
- Familiarity with MBSE tools and modern SE methods
- Customer interaction and collaboration
- Understanding of DoD program environments
From: Kratos Defense