R&D Manager, Systems Engineering

It’s fun to work in a company where people truly believe in what they are doing! Job Summary The R&D Manager, Systems Engineering is a hands‑on technical and people leader within Neogen’s Instrumentation and Software R&D organization. This role leads a multidisciplinary team of approximately 3–6 mechanical and electrical engineers while directly applying systems engineering principles across new product development, portfolio modernization, and sustaining engineering.

The R&D Manager, Systems Engineering is responsible for strengthening and scaling systems engineering practices across the instrumentation development lifecycle. This includes system architecture, requirements development and traceability, interface management, system integration, design risk management, verification and validation, and technical decision‑making. This position partners closely with Product Management, Portfolio Management, Software, Firmware, Quality, Regulatory, Manufacturing, Service, and other Engineering functions to translate customer and business needs into technically sound product architectures and executable engineering plans.

• Define system, subsystem, and component architectures for complex multidisciplinary products.
• Lead functional decomposition and allocation across mechanical, electrical, software, and firmware domains.
• Develop and maintain system and subsystem requirements with clear acceptance criteria, bidirectional traceability, and disciplined change control.
• Define and manage interfaces across engineering disciplines, subsystems, external partners, manufacturing environments, and connected software systems.
• Lead system‑level technical decision‑making, including evaluation of design trade‑offs, risks, dependencies, and implementation options.
• Communicate technical decisions, risks, assumptions, and recommendations clearly to engineering teams and senior stakeholders.

• Plan and lead system integration across hardware, software, firmware, electrical, and mechanical elements.
• Establish integration sequencing, test readiness, issue triage, and cross‑functional resolution processes.
• Develop system‑level verification and validation strategies that demonstrate requirements coverage, product performance, robustness, reliability, and intended use.
• Partner with engineering teams to ensure subsystem and component verification supports overall system‑level objectives.
• Lead or support investigation of complex system‑level failures, integration issues, and performance gaps.
• Ensure technical evidence and documentation support applicable design reviews and product‑development requirements.

• Establish and scale practical systems engineering methodologies, tools, templates, and design‑review practices.
• Develop consistent approaches for requirements management, traceability, interface definition, architecture development, integration, and verification.
• Identify opportunities to improve engineering rigor, efficiency, and consistency across product‑development programs.
• Support implementation and adoption of requirements‑management and traceability tools.
• Advance the use of modeling, simulation, model‑based systems engineering, and digital‑twin approaches where appropriate.
• Promote systems thinking and cross‑disciplinary engineering practices throughout the organization.

• Integrate technical and design risk management into architecture and product‑development decisions.
• Lead or support risk analyses, design reviews, mitigation planning, and technical risk tracking.
• Identify potential system‑level failure modes, interface risks, and…