Systems Engineering

Systems engineering is the discipline that decides whether the rest of the programme works, and it's consistently the hardest of the six to fill. The people we're looking for hold the whole design in their head: requirements flow-down, interface definition, architecture trade-offs, integration, and the verification evidence that proves the thing does what it was specified to do.

Most of this work sits within a formal process — ISO 15288, DO-178C, or a customer's own standard — and the process experience is often what separates a credible candidate from a strong engineer who would struggle. Requirements management tooling (DOORS, Polarion, Jama) is usually part of the picture, and verification and validation is a specialism in its own right rather than an afterthought at the end of a project.

The recruitment problem is that good systems engineers are usually built rather than hired. They come from a hardware or software background and grow into the breadth. That means the available pool is older, more expensive, and more likely to be somewhere they're already valued.