Principal Systems Engineer

JOB TITLE: Principal Systems Engineer

LOCATION: Slough

SALARY RANGE: Very Competitive & Excellent Benefits

5 Days a week on Site

About the Role

The Systems Engineering function provides engineering leadership and governance across all phases of the project lifecycle, ensuring solutions meet scope, cost, schedule, and quality objectives. The role is responsible for leading the implementation and assurance of ISO 15288-aligned systems engineering processes, supporting multi-disciplinary project teams to realise stakeholder requirements and deliver fully compliant, high-quality products to the satisfaction of customers.

Operating with significant autonomy, this role provides both technical and managerial leadership, ensuring engineering excellence, compliance, and continual improvement throughout the systems engineering lifecycle.

Key responsibilities:

As the Principal Systems Engineer you will be able to:

• Lead and assure the implementation of ISO 15288 and associated systems engineering processes across the full lifecycle, from concept through to verification and validation.
• Provide engineering leadership and governance, ensuring that systems engineering activities are executed effectively, efficiently, and compliantly across assigned projects.
• Ensure that stakeholder and customer requirements are accurately captured, managed, and validated through high-quality requirements and design documentation.
• Oversee the development of compliant system architectures and designs, ensuring effective integration of hardware, software, and firmware subsystems.
• Manage and mentor multi-disciplinary teams (typically 10+ engineers), fostering strong collaboration and capability growth within the engineering function.
• Assure and approve technical deliverables, ensuring quality and traceability throughout the engineering lifecycle.
• Apply systems modelling techniques (UML, SysML, MBSE) to define, analyse, and validate solutions.
• Support Basis of Estimate (BoE) activities, providing accurate cost and resource projections for bids and change proposals.
• Identify opportunities for project growth, innovation, and process improvement, ensuring continual enhancement of systems engineering effectiveness.
• Provide technical input to formal reviews (SRR, PDR, CDR, TRR, etc.) and ensure readiness for customer acceptance.

What You ll Need:

• Extensive experience within the Defence or Aerospace industry, with a proven record of applying systems engineering to complex, safety- or mission-critical projects.
• Deep understanding of the Systems Engineering V lifecycle and alternative development models (iterative, incremental, agile).
• Demonstrable experience implementing the full Systems Engineering lifecycle in accordance with relevant ISO/IEC/IEEE standards.
• Proven technical and line management experience leading a team of systems engineers.
• Strong background in developing high-quality technical documentation and conducting formal technical reviews.
• Substantial knowledge of current systems engineering practices, methodologies, and technology trends.
• Proficiency with requirements management and modelling tools, including DOORS, Enterprise Architect, UML, and SysML.
• Prior hands-on experience in hardware, software, or firmware development, ideally within an embedded systems environment.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder engagement, and leadership skills.

Why Apply?

Join the team redefining defense technology. From engineering systems that save lives to leading programs that change the battlefield find your place in the future of defense.

Join the team and participate in the innovation that ensures the highest security and trust worldwide.

What Next?

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