Senior Systems Engineer

Cambridge Design Partnership is looking for a Senior Systems Engineer to operate as Technical Lead on a range of complex Electromechanical products for our clients. Working alongside a Project Manager to manage a multidisciplinary team, you will bring mechanical, electrical, firmware, and software elements together to ensure the complete product works as intended.

This is a practical, delivery-focused role. You will shape requirements and architecture, assess risks and technical options, plan integration and testing, and help resolve issues as ideas become working prototypes and production-ready designs. You should be just as comfortable discussing a design with a client as you are investigating a problem in the lab.

We are particularly interested in engineers with an electrical or mechatronics background who enjoy thinking beyond their own discipline. You will work with talented specialists across a variety of product development projects and take on technical responsibility appropriate to your experience.

Job Duties and Responsibilities

Systems Engineering and Product Ownership

• Take a whole-product view of development, from initial feasibility and concept selection through detailed design, integration and verification.
• Turn stakeholder needs into practical requirements and trace them through to verification
• Manage Technical Risk and develop effective Risk Control Measures to ensure products are safe to use and meet regulatory constraints
• Comfortable managing mechanical, electronics, firmware, software and other specialists together so that individual subsystems work as one coherent product.
• Spot technical gaps and risks early, agree priorities with the team and drive engineering issues through to resolution.

Requirements, Architecture and Interfaces

• Take the lead on defining, reviewing and maintaining system requirements, making sure they are clear, testable and linked to the needs they address.
• Shape system architecture, data flow, and long-term technical roadmaps across multiple teams.
• Develop functional architectures, break products into manageable subsystems and agree technical responsibilities across engineering disciplines.
• Define interfaces between hardware, embedded software, controls and mechanical systems, including signals, power, communications and physical connections.
• Establish and assess key performance budgets, such as power, timing, accuracy or throughput, using analysis and test data to guide decisions.

Technical Problem Solving and Risk

• Take a hands-on approach to technical challenges, working with engineers to investigate unexpected behavior and find the root cause of problems.
• Plan and carry out focused feasibility work, experiments and prototype tests to answer important engineering questions early.
• Manage design reviews and risk assessments, helping the team make sound decisions on performance, reliability, safety and design maturity.
• Manage DFMEA and Risk Registers, assessing risk acceptability and tracing risks through Risk Control Measures to implementation

Integration, Test and Verification

• Plan how subsystems will be brought together and tested, with clear methods and acceptance criteria for demonstrating product performance.
• Support the build and integration of electromechanical prototypes, helping diagnose issues across electronics, controls, firmware, software and mechanisms.
• Prepare test methods and plans, participate in testing, interpret results and follow through on failures and design changes.
• Maintain clear evidence that the product meets its requirements through traceability documentation, and support design handover and transfer with the necessary technical information.

Working with Clients and Project Teams

• Act as a technical lead point of contact, giving project teams a clear view of the overall design and the implications of technical decisions.
• Explain technical options, trade-offs and recommendations clearly to clients and colleagues, using the right level of detail for the audience.
• Work with project managers and technical leads to plan engineering activities, estimate effort and manage technical dependencies and priorities.
• Collaborate with suppliers and external partners to agree specifications, resolve interface issues and integrate their work into the product.
• Support writing proposals, costing and planning work, technical workshops and design reviews, and help colleagues use systems engineering methods in a practical, proportionate way.

• Track record of at least 10 years' experience designing…