Principal Systems Engineer - Off-Road Autonomy

About the role

SteerAI builds off-road autonomy for defense, developing ground vehicles and robots that perceive, plan and operate in unstructured, GPS-degraded and contested terrain. It is seeking a Principal Systems Engineer to act as the senior technical steward for systems engineering across its autonomy programs and to lead the Systems and Design team of systems engineers and systems architects. The role owns the system requirements across the autonomy stack, unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and command and control (C2) systems, and sets the standards, processes and rigor that scale across programs.

Key responsibilities

• Own the systems engineering practice across products and programs, covering requirements management, interface control, verification and validation strategy, MBSE methodology and architecture review gates.
• Lead the Systems and Design team, set technical direction, allocate work and mentor engineers.
• Author and drive top-level system requirements and the traceable SRS and ICDs from elicitation through validation.
• Promote adoption of SysML and MBSE to create an authoritative system model.
• Partner with safety and cybersecurity teams on risk management and safety cases using ISO 26262, ISO 21448 (SOTIF) and UL 4600, plus defense and regulatory requirements.
• Define a verification and validation strategy spanning simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, software-in-the-loop and field testing, and guide prototype development.
• Support proposals, technical reviews (SRR, PDR, CDR), capability demonstrations and roadmaps with the Growth and Product teams.

Required profile

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Systems Engineering, Robotics, Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science or a related field; advanced degree preferred.
• 8 to 12+ years in systems engineering or system architecture, with principal-level ownership of complex architectures for autonomous vehicles, UGVs or field robotics, and a track record of moving systems from concept to fielded deployment.
• Experience leading systems engineering teams, setting technical standards across programs and mentoring senior engineers.
• Strong familiarity with functional safety and autonomy assurance standards and safety cases.
• Experience supporting defense programs, government customers or structured acquisition milestones is strongly preferred.

Required skills

• Systems engineering principles: ISO 15288 lifecycle, V-model, SysML, MBSE, sensor fusion and autonomous-vehicle technologies.
• Proficiency with MATLAB, Simulink and ROS, and modeling tools such as Cameo Systems Modeler or Enterprise Architect.
• Familiarity with requirements management tools such as DOORS, Jama or Polarion.
• Working knowledge of AI/ML, edge computing and cloud computing in autonomous systems.
• Agile development and strong communication with engineering teams, executives and defense customers.