W78 Systems Engineer; R&D Engineer

What You Will Do

This position will be filled at either the R&D Engineer 2 or R&D Engineer 3 level, depending on the skills, education, and experience of the selected candidate.

Weapon system engineers are called upon to provide technical leadership and expertise to ensure the safety, reliability, and security of our Nation's nuclear stockpile for the entire weapon life cycle. The selected candidate will serve as a systems engineer within the W78 Systems Engineering Group (W-3). This position will require regular interactions with other national laboratories and production agencies (PA), the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Department of Defense (DoD), and their contractors.

All W78 systems engineers will professionally collaborate with others throughout the group, division, laboratory, and Nuclear Weapons Complex, to solve complex technical and programmatic issues associated with the warhead while encouraging learning, teaming, mutual respect, and excellence at all levels.

Given the scope and impact of this position, competitive candidates are expected to demonstrate a high standard of professionalism, accountability, teamwork and leadership, ethics, and technical rigor.

W-3 is seeking a weapon system engineer to work within our team to ensure the continued safety, performance, reliability, and certification of the W78 nuclear package. The scope includes serving as a component lead and participating in surveillance data reviews and/or anomalous finding investigations. The qualified individual will also work within a team to evaluate and document system requirements and qualification gaps, support technical basis activities tied to evaluation of lifetime variables, execute design and product qualification, and participate in technical risk discussions.

The selected candidate will serve as a System Engineer within the W78 System Engineering Group supporting the team in having an in-depth knowledge on various components within our system, and new or ongoing technical studies. Responsibilities for this position include, but are not limited to:

• Contributing to the research, design, testing, analysis, verification, and validation of engineering and technology solutions in support of R&D initiatives.
• Applying and interpreting existing discipline-specific engineering and scientific principles, techniques, methods and tools to provide solutions for a wide assortment of complex problems.
• Participating in and contributing to the completion of milestones on projects as assigned.
• Work in a team environment to address and solve problems within a system, sub-system, component or material.
• Assure safety and security compliance, maintain required safety and security training, and make safety and security an integral part of every task, including taking the necessary steps to stop work if continuing the job is unsafe or compromises security.

In addition to what was outlined at the lower level, at the R&D Engineer 3 level, additional responsibilities for this position include, but are not limited to:

• Contributing or being an engineering lead in any of the following areas: stockpile finding notifications (SFNs) and investigations (SFIs), and military unsatisfactory reports (URs), and overseeing of disassembly operations.
• Leading an extensive and diverse set of activities across multiple engineering disciplines.
• Designing, planning, and executing research on technical projects.
• Develop mentoring skills and mentoring junior staff and peers in technical field.
• Provide technical input to support program management deliverables in support of the W78 system, e.g., Level 2 milestones, monthly reports, work package development, and allocations.

Experience & Knowledge

• Demonstrated experience with one or more of the following areas: engineering design, development, qualification, assembly/production, or testing.
• Basic knowledge of systems engineering principles (e.g., system architecture, requirements management, and the verification and validation process).
• Experience with engineering authorization and document management systems.
• Technical project leadership experience including the development of and clearly defining deliverables and milestones.

• Excellent organizational skills and the ability to meet schedule and deliverables for multiple concurrent projects with a range of priorities.
• Excellent interpersonal, oral, and written communication using MS Office Suite (Word, PowerPoint, Excel).
• Demonstrated ability to interact effectively with multi-faceted personnel including internal and external customers, as well as experience with conflict resolution.
• Demonstrated ability to work with nominal supervision, as well as part of a team in a multi-disciplinary environment, and to interact effectively with a variety of organizations.
• Demonstration of strong problem-solving processes.
• Demonstrated ability to meet schedule and…