Chief Engineer

Intellisense Systems, Inc. is a privately held company with a proven track record of developing and deploying innovative products that successfully operate in the most extreme environments. We are a fast-growing Southern California technology innovator that solves tough, mission-critical challenges for our customers in the aerospace, defense, and commercial markets. We design, develop, and manufacture advanced products for ground, maritime, and airborne applications.

We’re seeking a Chief Engineer to join our growing organization to drive successful execution of key technical efforts for DoD applications. As Chief Engineer, you will be responsible for guiding development of new and existing efforts performed by a multi-disciplinary team of electrical, mechanical, firmware, and software engineers. Your role will cover both technical and managerial duties with expectations that you can:

• Contribute technical output in your field (e.g. electrical, mechanical, software designs)
• Assess the quality of electronic, mechanical, and software engineering work from other engineers to prevent over‑engineering and to eliminate overly complex approaches.
• Influence the technical direction of each program in coordination with their customers (particularly when unexpected issues arise) to ensure that only the simplest and most direct path is chosen.
• Support documentation and testing efforts so that designs can be fully qualified and certified against various military and avionics standards.
• Support proposal and costing efforts.

While Intellisense achieves the same levels of certification as large aerospace primes, as a small business Intellisense does so with a mindset of practicality and simplification in order to achieve lower cost and great agility for our customers without compromising quality. Rather than dogmatic or formalized processes that slow innovation, Intellisense expects its staff to have a deep technical understanding of problems that arise to enable pragmatic and efficient problem solving.

As such your role as the Chief Engineer at Intellisense will not be high-level and process‑focused but rather will consist of direct technical design contributions as well as oversight of the work of others to ensure that successful technical execution is achieved.

• Write proposals for SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) grants as well as supporting the writing and costing of non-SBIR proposals led by the Intellisense business development department.
• Guide testing efforts (e.g., MIL‑STD‑810, 461, 704, DO‑178, etc.) on multiple programs to ensure that the testing performed prioritizes the right aspects of each system to achieve robust and reliable products.
• Support creation and presentation of customer deliverables including documents, artifacts, and presentations required for SFR, SRR, PDR, CDR, etc. as well as certification documents.
• Engage in hands‑on design, troubleshooting, and problem‑solving as needed in areas of expertise.
• Assert lessons learned and proven design elements in new designs and products.
• The ideal candidate is equally comfortable at a lab bench, in a design review, and in a room with a Contracting Officer's Representative (COR) or Program Manager discussing schedule and cost.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

• Mentor the engineering team by assessing the quality and simplicity of engineering work produced, and offer guidance to improve those designs.
• Set expectations and offer exemplary work product examples to achieve the best work product from the engineering team.

• BS from an accredited institution in an engineering discipline and 20+ years of working experience in that discipline.
• 5+ years of experience in aerospace, defense electronics, mission systems, or related high-reliability domains.
• Strong hands‑on experience in designing and troubleshooting electronic, electromechanical, and/or software systems.
• Strong analytical, problem‑solving, and systems engineering skills.
• Collaborative and adaptable, able to work effectively with diverse teams and stakeholders.
• Strong verbal and written…