Senior Systems Architect Kirkland, WA Research and Development

Echodyne offers the world’s first compact solid-state true beam-steering radar for a wide range of industries and applications. Our high-performance radars work in all weather and are designed for autonomous vehicles, uncrewed aircraft & drones, and security of borders, critical infrastructure, and smart cities. The company combines the patented technology of metamaterials with powerful software to create a radar sensor with unprecedented performance at commercial price points.

Echodyne offers its radars to companies working in Automotive, Transportation, Critical Infrastructure Protection, Border Security, Smart Cities, Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS), and Airspace Management including Urban Air Mobility (UTM).

Echodyne is seeking a Senior Systems Architect to join the Advanced Technology Development team, define system architectures for rapid radar prototypes and critical technologies, and guide cross-disciplinary technical decisions.

You will join a high-performing engineering team that gives senior engineers meaningful ownership and a direct role in shaping future radar products. You will work on prototype and advanced technology development, where you will connect sensing, calibration, compute, power, packaging, software, test, and field-demonstration needs into a coherent system approach.

The ideal candidate combines practical systems architecture experience with broad technical judgment, disciplined experimentation, and the ability to create enough structure for fast decisions without slowing prototype execution.

• Develop mission needs, concepts of operation, success criteria, and system objectives for radar prototypes and future Advanced Technology Development efforts
• Translate product goals, use cases, operating environments, research inputs, and business constraints into functional, logical, and physical architectures, requirements, interfaces, and technical budgets
• Lead trade studies across radar performance, RF and digital architecture, compute, calibration, power, thermal, mechanical packaging, software, test, cost, schedule, and manufacturability
• Define prototype experiments, integration plans, and verification evidence needed to retire the highest-impact technical risks before formal product development
• Maintain the technical integrity of architecture baselines, key assumptions, interfaces, margins, decisions, risks, and configuration-sensitive system information
• Collaborate with Product, Research, RF, electrical, FPGA, software, mechanical, PCB, test, manufacturing, suppliers, and key stakeholders to deliver mission-critical solutions
• Turn prototype results into clear architecture decisions, reusable system guidance, and transition packages that product-development teams can execute

• Experience developing system architectures for complex hardware and software products, embedded systems, radar systems, sensing products, aerospace systems, or defense technology
• Demonstrated ability to translate mission needs, customer use cases, and operating environments into system requirements, architectures, interfaces, technical budgets, and verification intent
• Experience defining and managing performance budgets, error budgets, design margins, assumptions, interfaces, and technical baselines
• Experience leading cross-disciplinary trade studies and resolving decisions across RF, electrical, digital, mechanical, software or firmware, test, manufacturing, quality, and supplier constraints
• Experience planning prototypes, experiments, integration events, and verification activities that connect technical risk to objective evidence
• Ability to communicate complex system decisions, risks, and…