Summer Placement Systems Engineer

Job Description

Are you ready to make an impact and gain hands‑on experience working on real‑world projects from day one? At Leonardo, we’re looking for summer placement students who want to be part of something bigger—shaping innovation, advancing technology, and enhancing global safety.

Our placements are designed to help you apply your studies in a practical setting, develop your technical skills, and gain valuable insight into how our business operates.

We have created a programme across our UK sites that not only increases your technical skills, but gives you the opportunity to work on meaningful real‑life projects, alongside experienced engineers and graduates across our business.

You will receive coaching and support to achieve your personal goals and work in multidisciplinary teams to gain as much experience across the product lifecycle from your time in industry as possible. Our aim is to see you through your undergrad years and successful placements will result in an offer to return for further placements or for an offer on our Graduate Development programme.

This 13‑week programme is remunerated £25,000 per annum and runs from 1st June 2026 to 28th August 2026.

Be involved in all aspects of design and development; from initial product design through to in‑service support.

Determine how the system needs to operate and collaborate to produce the required overall operational behaviours.

Dive into the deepest level of detail – taking the system piece‑by‑piece and defining its design to the finest point.

Actively engage in R&D, developing new concepts and conducting fundamental research into our future technologies.

Work on real engineering problems within either the Radar or the Advanced Targeting business area.

Have the opportunity to be involved in supporting a wide range of tasks across multiple projects/products, such as:

• The radar for the Typhoon fighter jet
• The radar for the SAAB Gripen fighter
• Our family of Surveillance AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radars
• An IRCM (Infra‑Red Counter Measures) system
• Our laser target designator or laser ranging systems

Core activities within Systems Engineering include:

• Requirements capture, design documentation, verification and validation.
• Algorithm design and test.
• Performance modelling; building physics‑based models to test our designs through computer simulation.
• Data analysis; end‑to‑end systems analysis using synthetic and ‘real world’ data.
• Applied research; from product improvements to blue‑sky thinking.

You will work with an experienced engineer who will provide day‑to‑day guidance and on‑the‑job training. You will be introduced to systems engineering processes, methods, technology and tools, with particular emphasis placed on learning practical skills that may not be easily gained or experienced in the academic environment of a university.

• Be a self‑motivated individual, willing to take on new challenges and drive continuous personal development
• Strong communication skills across a variety of mediums i.e. written, verbal, digital, etc.
• The ability to develop effective working relationships with peers and stakeholders
• Adaptable to the ever‑changing demands that will be encountered within the role
• Offer novel ideas and methods for solving technical problems, drawing on personal experiences and knowledge learned during academic studies

All of our Summer Placement roles require you to be currently studying a relevant degree discipline such as Physics, Mathematics, Engineering, or other STEM subject degrees. This should be a minimum of a Bachelors level degree.

All successful candidates must be returning to university after their Summer Placement, i.e. not in their final year.

In addition to this, we would be interested in hearing from you if you have experience in:

• Coding/programming.
• Relevant project work and/or placements in industry.
• Applying your science and technology knowledge to solve a real‑world problem

This is not an exhaustive list, and we are keen to hear from you even if you might not have experience in all the above. The most…