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Principal Systems Engineer
Job Location:
Job Location:
Fairfax, VA - USA
Monthly Salary:
Not provided by the employer
Monthly Salary:
Experience Required:
5years
Experience Required:
Posted:
28 September 2026 (Yesterday)
Posted:
Application Deadline:
26 December 2026
Application Deadline:
Vacancies:
1 Vacancy
Vacancies:
Job Summary
This is a remote position.
Principal Systems Engineer
Location: Remote United States. Periodic travel to the clients East Coast headquarters up to a quarter of the time.
Employment Type: Full-time direct hire
Compensation: $140000 to $200000 base salary plus benefits
Direct Reports: None (technical leadership role)
Summary
Intrepidus Talent Solutions is an aerospace and defense executive search firm. On behalf of a client that builds flight electronics for national security and civil space missions we are recruiting a Principal Systems Engineer to lead multidisciplinary development programs from concept through delivery.
The company designs radiation-tolerant electronic systems for harsh space environments and has a track record of getting hardware qualified and on orbit. Engineering rigor is the culture: formal design and peer reviews disciplined baselines and development processes scaled to the size of the program rather than imported from a large prime.
What You Will Do
You will be the senior technical voice on your programs. Reporting to the head of systems engineering you will drive the technical approach set and defend the baseline and make sure trade studies analysis and verification actually close before hardware ships. You will work alongside program managers and chief engineers as the technical point of contact for the program including in front of customers.
- Lead engineers across electrical mechanical software and firmware disciplines in developing RF digital processing and networking electronics for spaceflight without formal direct reports
- Run the systems engineering process for your programs: requirements definition and flow-down trade studies and analysis technical baseline control and verification and validation through qualification
- Plan and present internal and customer design reviews and serve as the programs technical representative to customers
- Contribute to internal research and development planning and new product roadmaps
- Support capture and proposal activity with technical approaches estimates and risk assessment
- Balance performance cost schedule and risk across programs and make the calls when they conflict
- Help engineering leadership build capability across the organization through mentoring process improvement and hiring input
What You Bring
- A bachelors degree in an engineering discipline (electrical computer or mechanical preferred) and typically 12 or more years of related experience; an advanced degree may offset some of the experience requirement
- A record of leading complex spaceflight or aerospace hardware through the full life cycle: concept design qualification production and delivery to the customer
- Deep expertise in at least one engineering domain and enough fluency in the others to resolve cross-discipline problems
- Practical command of systems engineering methods applied to real product development not just process documentation
- The judgment to work from high-level objectives with minimal direction
- Clear written and verbal communication including presenting technical positions to customers and executives
Nice to Have
- Masters degree in a STEM field
- Prior work on high-reliability or radiation-hardened electronics for space or similar survivability-driven applications
- Software-defined system architecture experience
- Board-level design background: schematic capture PCB layout high-speed digital mixed-signal and signal integrity analysis with tools such as Altium PSpice LTspice Keysight ADS or SOLIDWORKS
- FPGA and embedded hardware experience including Xilinx Zynq UltraScale or Versal devices and VPX (VITA 46 VITA 65) form factors
- Signal processing or algorithm development
- Modeling and requirements tooling such as MBSE MATLAB Simulink STK or requirements management databases
- Networking fundamentals and familiarity with the OSI model
Compensation and Benefits
Base salary is expected to fall between $140000 and $200000 depending on experience skills education internal equity and work location. The client provides medical dental and vision coverage; life AD&D and disability insurance; HSA and FSA options; paid time off and holidays; a 401(k) with company match; tuition reimbursement; parental and military leave; and a discretionary annual bonus for eligible positions.
About Intrepidus Talent Solutions
Intrepidus Talent Solutions recruits engineering program and corporate leaders for aerospace and defense companies. Our founders spent their careers leading talent acquisition at Northrop Grumman and L3Harris and bring that operators view to every search. All applications are handled in confidence. Our client is an equal opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants without regard to race color religion sex sexual orientation gender identity national origin disability or protected veteran status.
