Senior Systems Engineer

ABOUT KRAKEN KINETICS

Kraken Kinetics designs and manufactures advanced kinetic solutions that enable modern war fighting capabilities for the United States Armed Forces and its allies. We specialize in mission-tailored warheads and firing systems for unmanned and autonomous weapon platforms, delivering production‑ready solutions at speed to address urgent national security challenges.

Our team brings decades of specialized Department of War experience across the full lifecycle of kinetic system development—from concept and design through testing, manufacturing, and operational deployment. Built on a foundation of work that helped lead the DoW into the era of kinetic drones, Kraken Kinetics combines commercial agility with deep technical expertise to deliver DEFINITIVE LETHALITY
™ when it matters most.

Kraken Kinetics is seeking an experienced Senior Systems Engineer to support the development and maturation of advanced defense products within a small, fast‑moving engineering organization.

This is a hands‑on execution role. The Senior Systems Engineer will work directly across mechanical, electrical, firmware, test, manufacturing, and program functions to translate customer and operational needs into clear system requirements, interfaces, verification strategies, and technical baselines. The role will remain closely involved in day‑to‑day engineering execution and product development rather than operating primarily in a strategic or advisory capacity.

In addition to direct systems engineering work, this position will provide technical mentorship to less‑experienced systems engineering personnel and help strengthen Kraken’s systems engineering practices as the organization grows. This includes establishing practical requirements structures, traceability approaches, review practices, verification methods, and technical documentation that improve engineering clarity without adding unnecessary process burden.

A key near‑term responsibility will be helping implement and mature Jama Connect as Kraken’s requirements management platform. The Senior Systems Engineer will help establish effective project structures, requirements hierarchies, traceability relationships, review workflows, verification linkages, templates, and basic administration practices that support ongoing engineering execution.

• Develop, capture, decompose, allocate, and maintain system‑level requirements derived from customer needs, operational use cases, internal product objectives, statements of work, applicable standards, and engineering constraints.
• Work with mechanical, electrical, firmware, test, manufacturing, and program personnel to ensure requirements are clear, testable, technically appropriate, and actionable.
• Develop and maintain requirements traceability, verification matrices, interface control documentation, system architecture artifacts, and related technical baselines.
• Support system architecture development, interface definition, trade studies, technical risk assessment, and system‑level engineering decisions.
• Identify requirement gaps, conflicts, assumptions, dependencies, and technical risks early and work with stakeholders to drive resolution.
• Coordinate with test and verification personnel to define verification methods, acceptance criteria, test coverage, and traceability between requirements and objective evidence.
• Support design reviews, test readiness reviews, production readiness reviews, failure investigations, and other technical reviews.
• Support development of compliance matrices, verification evidence, customer‑facing technical documentation, and other controlled engineering artifacts.
• Help maintain alignment between requirements, system architecture, detailed…