Lead Systems Engineer (Design Authority)

Basildon, England, United Kingdom

7/14/2025

Job Description

Lead Systems Engineer

Job Description

Leonardo has a fantastic opportunity for a Lead Systems Engineer on a permanent basis working at our modern and purpose-built Luton (Capability Green) site. The Lead Systems Engineer will need to be a talented and highly experienced Engineer, familiar with working on complex systems. The Lead Sysems Engineer will have hands-on experience of leading the development of engineering design projects through integration and acceptance, managing a diverse range of stakeholder needs and requirements to achieve the desired outcome.

This Lead Systems Engineer role is within the NATO JEWCS IPT and will focus on the development and integration of several COTS and bespoke Software and hardware components to act as an integrated backbone of a system of systems.

What You Will Do

• Lead the engineering design and development activities for emerging products utilising proven technologies.
• Work alongside key stakeholders to elicit and understand user needs and requirements.
• Define and influence system- and subsystem-level requirements and designs, ensuring suitable routes to compliance and acceptance.
• Develop and deliver engineering documents, reports and presentations for to customers and industry partners.
• Manage the planning and execution of systems engineering work packages.
• Lead identification of risks and mitigation strategies including opportunities, using team specialists and strengths
• Investigating the cause of anomalies observed during integration or evaluation activities
• Integration and testing activities
• Lead the generation of reports and presentations for delivery to customers and industry partners, potentially acting in review and approval roles such as Design Authority for particular products
• Support the management of Suppliers and project Make or Buy decisions
• Travel within the UK and abroad to meet with our customers and industry partners.
  
  

What We Are Looking For

You really must have

• Experience of leading engineering projects and people to successfully deliver project goals.
• Extensive experience of multi-level requirements elicitation and derivation for complex systems.
• High proficiency in influencing and negotiating requirements and design decisions, both within internal project teams and within an external customer environment.
• Good self-motivation and autonomy with a strong aptitude for problem-solving and decision-making within projects involving design complexity and uncertainty with the ability to balance conflicting challenges.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with experience of delivery to a variety of internal and external stakeholders of varying seniorities.
• Commercial and business awareness
• Experience working with software centric systems
  
  

It would be nice if you had

• Experience of working in the defence electronics sector, ideally with airborne sensor systems.
• An understanding of common networking software and hardware (For example Cisco, Palo Alto, VMWare, Windows Active Directory, Trellix)
• Experience of working with UK MOD (e.g. RAF, dstl, DE&S) and NATO (i.e. NCIA, SHAPE)
• An understanding of key principles associated with RF signal propagation and processing.
• An understanding of the deployment of airborne military platforms, systems and operation within the enterprise environment.
• An understanding of Electronic Warfare and its associated operational support
  
  

Primary Location

GB - Basildon

Contract Type

Permanent

Hybrid Working

Hybrid