Senior Systems Engineer

Overall Purpose of the Job:

Making a real and immediate contribution to UK national security and defence, developing and delivering operational capabilities in the Cyber and Crypto domains.

We are offering the opportunity to work closely with customers as a Senior System Engineer, making use of strong, business analysis, consultancy, Systems Thinking and requirements engineering skills.  You will be able operate throughout a project's lifecycle to engage with complex stakeholder sets, scope and elicit their needs, engineer these into a structured, disciplined model of their requirements and support subsequent acquisition of a solution.

Key Elements of the Role:

• Working flexibly either as part of a team or singly, delivering Customer-friend consultancy and business analysis to support internal and external customers in their planning and management of acquisition, research or product development activities.
• Reaching back to QinetiQ capabilities and innovating to support customer mission needs.
• Using people/soft skills to identify, engage and manage internal and external stakeholder communities.
• Understanding and analysing stakeholder needs and expectations to elicit, capture and manage their requirements for a capability.
• Analysing requirements and translating them into logical system requirements and constraints
• Managing complex information sets.
• Supporting the procurement phase of projects.
• Supporting the V&V phase of projects.
• Collaborating with project teams as a solution develops to ensure its continuing compliance to requirements.
• Identification of, reporting back on, and developing additional customer business opportunities.

Successful outcomes of this role:

• Has successfully engaged and managed stakeholder communities.
• Is seen as part of the Customer’s team, a trusted Customer-Friend.
• Has successfully elicited, engineered and managed good quality stakeholder requirements.
• Has identified how QinetiQ’s wider capabilities can add value to the Customer and has developed solutions based on these.
• Has produced good quality, customer-endorsed requirements sets.
• Has provided the Customer with effective solutions.

Opportunities:

• Applying the emotional intelligence and diplomacy necessary to work successfully with diverse stakeholder groups.
• Blending in to become part of the Customer’s team.
• Being flexible in approach, emphasising Systems Thinking, Systems Engineering, Project Management, Change Management or general Consultancy as required to add best value to the customer.
• Identifying and delivering solutions to customers’ real, unstated needs as well as those directly expressed.
• Engaging with the complexity of enterprise / technical problems.
• Differentiating problem definition from solution design.
• Rapidly assimilating information and gaining a good understanding of the problems and issues associated with new tasks.
• Working with multidisciplinary teams that may be drawn from across the organisation (and more widely).
• Thriving in a varied, complex, and frequently changing work environment, often with demanding timescales.

Person Specification

Essential Knowledge, Skills and Experience Required:

• Knowledge of the UKIC & Defence domains.
• An ability to understand and analyse business needs (Operational User / Mission Needs) and articulate these as requirements. It would be beneficial (not essential) if this included evidence of having worked on or with operational analysts.
• An ability to engage with a wide range of stakeholders (sometimes with conflicting or unsupportive views) to establish and validate this need, and provide supporting argument / evidence to business cases. Evidence of developing stakeholder support through influence would also be desirable.
• Experience of translating business need into high level requirements and design, at the enterprise level, covering the range of elements that make up capabilities

• Ability to work with other Project/Systems Engineering and Subject Matter Experts to develop detailed designs and planning.
• Experience of planning for integration, verification and validation across UKIC or defence.
• Experience of undertaking IV&V across either of these communities.
• Experience of capability rollout (transfer to operations), generating business outcomes.
• Experience of using Agile (desirable) and ‘V’ (Essential) lifecycles.

Desirable Knowledge, Skills and Experience Required – any of:

• Knowledge of the particular domains we operate within:
  • Cryptography and Key Management (Crypt-Key).
  • Vulnerability Research (CN*).
  • Cyber Defence.
  • Cyber Exercising.
• Requirements Engineering experience.
• Understanding of the difference between Stakeholder/User Requirements, System Requirements and Design Specifications.
• Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE).
• Architectural Framework (e.g. MODAF, TOGAF) experience.
• Broad understanding of Government and industry standard Systems Engineering processes.
• Familiar with DOORS®.
• Understanding of Information Management principles.
• Solid Systems Engineering knowledge.
• Experience of supporting acquisition projects.
• Understanding of architectures, including enterprise architecting.
• Understanding of Information Management principles.
• Flexibility to travel as required to support project activities

Essential Personal Qualities and Behavioural Requirements:

• Systems thinker.
• Good questioning, listening, influencing and general interpersonal skills.
• Well-developed oral & written communication, negotiation and presentation skills Enjoys addressing unknowns.
• Analytical and logical thinking skills.
• Self-motivated, with a ‘can-do’ attitude.
• Collaborative, ‘one team’ outlook.
• Able to work and produce consistent results with minimal supervision.
• Can adapt and work flexibly.

Essential Education, Qualifications and Training:

• Degree or equivalent in a relevant engineering or technical discipline, or proven experience working in an equivalent engineering role.
• Intention to join/membership of appropriate professional body.

Why join QinetiQ?

As we continue to grow into new markets around the world, there’s never been a more exciting time to join QinetiQ. The formula for success is our appetite for innovation and having the courage to take on a wide variety of complex challenges.

You’ll experience a unique working environment where teams from different backgrounds, disciplines and experience enjoy collaborating widely and openly as we undertake this exciting and rewarding journey. Through effective teamwork, and pulling together, you’ll get to experience what happens when we all share different perspectives, blend disciplines, and link technologies; constantly discovering new ways of solving complex problems in an diverse and inclusive environment where you can be authentic, feel valued and realise your full potential. Read more about our diverse and inclusive workplace culture here.  

Joining QinetiQ offers you an opportunity to work on a broad range of interesting defence-based projects with vast career progression across a global organisation in addition to competitive personal and professional benefits.  You’ll receive a highly competitive salary and benefits package: our basic salaries are very attractive as we constantly review what’s happening in the market. The range of benefits that we offer include, adaptive and flexible working, generous holiday entitlements, Health Cash Plan, Private Medical Insurance and Dental Insurance and much more. 

About QinetiQ

As a company of over 6,000 dedicated professionals, we are a world-centre of excellence in research and development and act as a catalyst for fast-track innovation, offering outstanding experimentation facilities, and technical, engineering and scientific expertise. QinetiQ is made up of dedicated experts in defence, aerospace, security and related markets, all working together to explore new ways of protecting what matters most. Being part of QinetiQ means being central to the safety and security of the world around us. Partnering with our customers, we help to save lives; reduce risks to society; and maintain the global infrastructure on which we all depend. Come and find out how you can play a role.

Please note that many roles in QinetiQ are subject to national security vetting. Applicants that already hold the appropriate level of vetting may be able to transfer it upon appointment, subject to approval. A number of roles are also subject to restrictions on access to information that mean factors such as nationality, previous nationalities held and the country in which you were born may have an effect on the roles that you can be employed in.