Principal Systems Engineer

1w1 week ago

EDGE

Abu Dhabi, AE · Full-time · AED 500,000 – AED 800,000

About this role

The Principal Systems Engineer provides senior technical leadership, governance, and assurance across defence projects. This role ensures system solutions meet operational, safety, regulatory, cost, and schedule requirements. It serves as the principal technical authority and key interface with customers, project management, engineering, certification authorities, and suppliers.

Leads the end-to-end systems engineering lifecycle from concept through disposal per ISO/IEC 15288 and EDGE MBSE policies. Defines and governs functional, physical, and logical system architectures while owning system requirements with full traceability, verification, and validation. Chairs major technical reviews like SRR, PDR, CDR, and SVR.

Oversees verification, validation, qualification, and certification strategies in regulated defence environments. Ensures compliance with standards such as MIL-STD, DEF STAN, and STANAG. Manages system safety, reliability, maintainability, human factors, technical risks, and opportunities.

Serves as primary technical interface with customers, partners, suppliers, and authorities. Supports bids, proposals, and technical evaluations while mentoring systems engineers. Promotes best practices and contributes to organisational capability development.

Requirements

15+ years’ experience in systems engineering within defence, aerospace, or similarly regulated industries
Proven experience leading multi-disciplinary systems through the full lifecycle
Strong background in regulated and safety-critical environments
Experience with airworthiness, weapons systems, or other high-integrity platforms
Exposure to Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) tools and practices
Expert knowledge of systems engineering principles, standards, and lifecycle processes (ISO/IEC 15288, INCOSE)
Strong capability in requirements management and configuration control
Excellent decision-making, analytical, and problem-solving abilities

Responsibilities

Lead the end-to-end systems engineering lifecycle from concept through disposal in accordance with ISO/IEC 15288 and EDGE MBSE policies
Act as the principal technical authority for assigned projects, approving system architectures, requirements baselines, and key technical decisions
Define, maintain, and govern functional, physical, and logical system architectures
Own and control system requirements, ensuring traceability, verification, validation, and managed change through formal configuration processes
Lead and chair major technical reviews including SRR, SFR, PDR, CDR, TRR, SVR, and PRR
Define and oversee verification, validation, qualification, and certification strategies, supporting test planning and anomaly resolution
Ensure compliance with applicable defence, safety, airworthiness, and regulatory standards (e.g., MIL-STD, DEF STAN, STANAG)
Lead or oversee system safety, reliability, maintainability, and human factors activities; identify, assess, and manage technical risks and opportunities