Staff Engineer Systems

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon. We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.

Join Northrop Grumman on our continued mission to push the boundaries of possible across land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. Enjoy a culture where your voice is valued and start contributing to our team of passionate professionals providing real-life solutions to our world’s biggest challenges. We take pride in creating purposeful work and allowing our employees to grow and achieve their goals every day by Defining Possible. With our competitive pay and comprehensive benefits, we have the right opportunities to fit your life and launch your career today.

Northrop Grumman Defense Systems, Special Mission Aircraft (SMA) Operating Unit (OU) is seeking a Staff (Level 5) Systems Engineer to join our team at our Middle River, MD or El Dorado Hills, CA facility. Our team provides customers with support specializing in the development of a novel turbine based power generator and pure digital power distribution electronics. The NGC IPMS team is developing novel energy production solutions for national security, military, and civil customers. We are built on a heritage of providing innovative, affordable and reliable aerospace and defense products that our customers rely on to achieve mission success. In this role at Northrop Grumman you will have a challenging and rewarding opportunity to be a part of our transformational Energy Production Innovation Center (NGC EPIC). Through the use of Model-based Engineering, DevSecOps and Agile practices we continue to evolve how we deliver energy and power distribution systems for critical national defense products and capabilities for the warfighter.  Our success is grounded in our ability to embrace change, move quickly and continuously drive innovation.  The successful candidate will be collaborative, open, transparent, and team-oriented with a focus on team empowerment & shared responsibility, flexibility, continuous learning, and a culture of automation. Join the IPMS energy revolution and make the impossible, possible.

In this role you will apply Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) to strengthen our Systems Engineering infrastructure and accelerate our development processes. A qualified candidate will collaborate with diverse engineering teams across the product lifecycle from pre-proposal through product development, delivery, and sustainment to assist in understanding customer solution intent, establishing and managing the technical baseline, supporting system modeling, and developing content for review milestones.

The Staff Systems Engineer will work closely with a team of experienced Systems Engineers and Architects to implement a rigorous MBSE capability that facilitates rapid scaling of our IPMS Family of scalable operational energy systems.

This is a highly technical MBSE role with interfaces across the entire team and visibility across the organization. The role includes tight cross-functional coordination with Product, Quality, Manufacturing Operations, and other Engineering functions to develop & deploy a high-reliability Systems Engineering lifecycle for this new product line.

This Staff Systems Engineer will report to the Principal Investigator and provide both hands-on MBSE modeling capabilities and technical mentoring on model-based requirements development. The MBSE will be deeply engaged in updating our engineering process infrastructure to ensure robust Model-Based Design (MBD) with bi-directional traceability from Product Requirements to Validation and will support continuous improvement of our agile development methodologies.

This Staff Systems Engineer will also work closely with our OEM and contracting partners to ensure efficient alignment of our development processes and MBSE infrastructure across internal and external partner boundaries.

Responsibilities

• Develop and deliver the full range of MBSE artifacts needed to support development of all IPMS applications, including SysML/UML models of ConOps & Requirements, Architecture models, and simulation cases
• Act as the program-deep subject matter expert on all aspects of model-based systems engineering, including developing appropriately tailored simulation & analysis methods to generate robust requirements for operational testing and other complex autonomy behaviors
• Support the creation of system and subsystem architecture views (functional, physical, power, safety, cybersecurity, etc.)
• Perform analyses to create and manage requirements, and generate specifications while working closely with internal and external customers, including develop CONOPS and timelines, perform functional decomposition and/or use case analysis, physics-based modeling and simulation
• Work closely with design integrated product teams to manage development of interface control documents and drawings to document the internal and external interfaces. Support work with the external interface agents to reach consensus on the interface design details.
• Establish and maintain requirement traceability; decompose, derive and allocate requirements to the architecture; and identify key and major characteristics
• Support reporting of metrics which include Key Performance Parameters (KPPs) and Technical Performance Measurements (TPMs)
• Participate in the planning of the verification and validation program and manage the requirements verification database. Perform a requirement compliance assessment.
• Support testing and/or evaluation/validation of complete system and subsystem analytical models or actual system implementation. Support the application of using system or subsystem analytical models and simulations to validate large scale system behavior.
• Support the preparation of supporting and presentation materials for Systems Engineering Technical Reviews, Technical Interchange Meetings and other formal program reviews
• Support proposals, cost estimates and project planning of the Systems Engineering scope of projects
• Mentor other engineers in the use of state-of-the-art MBSE tools and methodologies to accelerate development by maximizing design reuse and reducing refactoring across applications
• Identify broader MBSE needs and evangelize increased use of model-based design and verification methods to ensure IPMS accomplishes its key business objectives

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor of Science degree or higher in Systems, Mechanical, Software, Electrical, Robotics, or a related Engineering field with at least 14 years work experience.  Master of Science in a STEM degree with at least 12 years work experience.
• 10 years of experience in MBSE, including experience using MBSE in highly-regulated safety-critical industries like Automotive, Aerospace & Defense, or Medical Robotics
• Deep competence in at least one of the following: systems control, embedded software, or power electronics
• Experience customizing system-level architectural frameworks, including TOGAF, DoDAF, MoDAF, Arcadia or other system-of-systems frameworks, to align with application and organizational needs
• Experience with and deep understanding of the MBSE toolchain including UML/SysML modeling tools like Cameo, MagicDraw, Enterprise Architect, Rhapsody or equivalent
• Experience integrating Hazard & Risk Analysis, fault trees, Failure Mode & Effect Analysis (FMEA), and other Safety-centric methodologies into the MBSE toolchain
• Embedded software development experience in a MBSE-centric framework, including use of autocode tools like Matlab-Simulink, Rhapsody in C, or similar code generators to accelerate coding

Preferred Qualifications

• Master of Science degree in Systems Engineering or Control Engineering
• Significant experience in Control Engineering, Software Engineering, or Power Electronics
• Strong team building skills to support the rapid growth of the MBSE function
• Strong communication and change management skills to accelerate MBSE adoption across the program team
• Proven commitment to mentoring and technical development of other Engineering staff
• Experience integrating optimization-based methodologies into architecture design and analysis

Bonus Qualifications

• Automotive industry engineering experience, with a Level 2+ autonomous vehicle developer
• Understanding of ISO 21448, ISO26262, DO-178B/C, or ARP4761 safety-critical system standards
• Ability to write, review or functionally understand implemented C++ and/or Python code
• SysML and Cameo expertise
• Working knowledge of DOORS (Classic or Next Gen)
• Experience/exposure to DODAF modeling

This position reports to Sacramento, CA, USA, however, you are able to work from any of the additional 3 locations listed above.

Salary Range: $161,000 USD - $241,400 USD

Employees may be eligible for a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay. Annual bonuses are designed to reward individual contributions as well as allow employees to share in company results. Employees in Vice President or Director positions may be eligible for Long Term Incentives. In addition, Northrop Grumman provides a variety of benefits including health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance, savings plan, Company paid holidays and paid time off (PTO) for vacation and/or personal business.

The health and safety of our employees and their families is a top priority. The company encourages employees to remain up-to-date on their COVID-19 vaccinations. U.S. Northrop Grumman employees may be required, in the future, to be vaccinated or have an approved disability/medical or religious accommodation, pursuant to future court decisions and/or government action on the currently stayed federal contractor vaccine mandate under Executive Order 14042 https://www.saferfederalworkforce.gov/contractors/.

Northrop Grumman is committed to hiring and retaining a diverse workforce. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer, making decisions without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, or any other protected class. For our complete EEO/AA and Pay Transparency statement, please visit http://www.northropgrumman.com/EEO. U.S. Citizenship is required for most positions.