Principal Systems Engineer

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Job Description:

Salary £53,500 to £68,000 Leonardo UK operates a grade-based salary framework with broad bands. The salary range shown reflects the approved grade band for this role, or a narrower hiring range published within that band, and is benchmarked against the external market. Exceptions above the standard range are managed through governance controls to protect internal equity. Your Impact:
We are seeking an experienced Principal Systems Engineer lead Integration, Test, Evaluation and Acceptance activities for advanced electro-optical and infrared sensing systems within the GCAP environment. This is an important systems engineering leadership role, responsible for defining and executing the system integration and verification strategy from detailed design through integration, qualification, acceptance, and transition to production. The successful candidate will shape both physical and digital integration approaches, ensuring robust verification of complex multi-disciplinary systems in a highly demanding defence environment.

The role offers the opportunity to influence next-generation sensing capability, working across national and international teams on technically challenging programmes. What you'll do Integration & Test Leadership Define integration and verification approaches appropriate for late-lifecycle delivery, ensuring readiness for hardware/software integration, qualification, acceptance, and release. Develop and maintain the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) electro-optical / infrared sensing systems ITEA master plan, including integration sequencing, verification logic, dependencies, risks, and maturity criteria.

Define progressive integration strategies from component, subsystem, equipment, and system-level verification through formal acceptance. Test Architecture & Systems Engineering Lead and define ITEA related strategy and associated systems artefacts including ITEA requirements. Develop the system integration and test architecture, ensuring testability is designed into the product architecture. Define verification architectures including:
Physical integration environments Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) environments Synthetic/digital test environments Laboratory and field test configurations Ensure requirements, interfaces, performance budgets, and verification methods remain aligned throughout integration. Digital & Synthetic Environments Lead development of the EOIR strategy for digital and synthetic integration/test environments. Define model-based verification approaches that enable early risk reduction, accelerated integration, and increased defect discovery prior to hardware availability.

Support digital thread adoption between requirements, architecture, interfaces, models, and verification artefacts. Stakeholder Coordination Liaise with the wider GCAP Test & Integration community to ensure consistency, reuse of best practice, and alignment of facilities, tooling, and processes. Coordinate integration activities across EOIR, subsystem teams, software, electronics, mechanical, detector, optics, and processing disciplines. Support design reviews, verification reviews, readiness reviews, qualification reviews, and customer acceptance activities.

Risk & Delivery Identify integration and verification risks early and develop mitigation plans. Support programme planning, schedule development, cost estimation, and technical maturity assessments. Provide technical leadership and mentoring to systems engineers supporting ITEA activities. What you'll bring Experience leading system integration and test activities on complex engineered products, ideally within highly regulated industries (e.g. aerospace, defence, sensing, or other safety-critical environments).

Proven experience in late lifecycle delivery, particularly post-critical design review integration, qualification, acceptance, and release. Strong systems engineering background covering requirements, architecture, interfaces, verification, and acceptance.

Desirable Experience

Experience with model-based systems engineering (MBSE). Experience working with digital twins, synthetic environments, HIL/SIL environments, or virtual integration frameworks.

Experience with in electro-optical / infrared sensing systems (EOIR), mission systems, or sensor fusion environments. Experience defining test equipment, test environments, and facility requirements. Security Clearance This role is subject to pre-employment screening in line with the UK Government's Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS). An additional range of Personnel Security Controls referred to as National Security Vetting (NSV) may apply, this could include meeting the eligibility requirements for The Security Check (SC) or Developed Vetting (DV).

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