Staff Engineer Systems

Staff Systems Engineer – Level 5

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon.

We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.

Northrop Grumman is currently seeking a Staff Systems Engineer – Level 5 to join our team at our Palm Beach Gardens, Florida or Elkton, Maryland locations to support the Propulsion Systems and Controls (PS&C) business unit.

In this role you will be working to support our Propulsion Systems & Controls Business Unit in developing the systems architecture to develop propulsion hardware such as valves, solid rocket motors, scramjets, ramjets, and thrusters for launch vehicles, missile systems, and space missions.

Our programs offer a unique experience to Systems Engineers, as you will get to experience the full Lifecycle development process from preliminary design to final test and delivery. We work with many customers from the Navy to the Air Force, as well as multiple private industry partners. The job will require the blending of Systems Engineering Principles and their application to hardware development programs at the subsystem level.

Job Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and coordination between engineering disciplines, program management, and external stakeholders to ensure an integrated solution.
• Own the system technical baseline and ensure alignment across requirements, architecture, interfaces, verification, and program execution.
• Plan and own systems engineering tasks required for project planning and execution, communicate milestones and need dates to program leads.
• Produce and maintain key systems engineering artifacts (Requirements specifications, ICDs, V&V matrices, logical/physical/functional architecture, and verification technical reports) in a model-based systems engineering environment (CAMEO).
• Define and plan, testing activities in conjunction with propulsion engineering, including propulsion tests at the Elkton campus, Ronkonkoma campus, or external ranges.
• Define and maintain a requirements decomposition strategy across subsystems and disciplines.
• Lead requirements and architecture reviews (PDR, CDR-level artifacts) to ensure completeness, consistency, feasibility, and testability.
• Lead Risk and Opportunity meetings on behalf of technical and programmatic team.
• Provide mentorship in Systems Engineering initiatives to other SE's and Propulsion Engineers.
• Demonstrate excellent written and verbal communication skills, strong social skills, and ability to build consensus among peers while building solid relationships with team members.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering or a STEM-related discipline with at least 12 years of relevant experience, or master's degree in engineering with at least 10 years of experience, or PhD in engineering with at least 8 years of experience.
• Demonstrated technical leadership (technical lead, IPT lead, SEIT Lead, deputy chief engineer, Lead Systems Engineer, or equivalent) on complex aerospace or weapon system programs.
• Experience with requirements development and management, including writing clear, testable requirements and maintaining a requirements baseline.
• Experience establishing and maintaining full requirements traceability (e.g., between stakeholder needs, system requirements, functional/physical architecture, lower-level requirements, and verification).
• Familiarity working in and directing scope in an MBSE environment (SysML preferred) using tools such as Cameo/Magic Draw, Rhapsody, or similar, and integrating models with requirements (e.g., DOORS).
• Experience leading technical reviews (e.g., SRR, PDR, CDR) or equivalent design/requirements reviews.
• Experience developing verification and validation (V&V) plans, including mapping requirements to verification methods (test, analysis, inspection, demonstration).
• Experience leading system integration and formal product qualification.
• Demonstrated ability to work across multi-disciplinary engineering teams to resolve requirements and design issues.
• Experience with at least one requirements management tool (e.g., DOORS, Jama, JIRA, or similar).
• Demonstrated problem-solving and analytical skills, including ability to identify risks/issues and propose mitigations.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to clearly document technical information and present to…