Principal Systems Engineer- DRT

About the role

Thales Defense & Security, Inc. (TDSI) headquartered in Clarksburg, MD, is a U.S. company serving domestic and international defense Air, Land and Sea domains for 60+ years, with over 1,000 employees and four subsidiaries (Advanced Acoustic Concepts, Digital Receiver Technology, Tampa Microwave, and Trusted Cyber Technologies). TDSI supports U.S. Joint Services, special operations forces and multi-national partners with communication, visualization, signal intelligence/electronic warfare, and sensor/sonar capabilities. Key technologies include tactical handheld radios, expeditionary satellite terminals, helmet-mounted displays, optics and target recognition, advanced radars, undersea sensing and missile systems. The opening is for a Principal Systems Engineer in the Germantown, MD office focusing on the EW/SIGINT line of Digital Receiver Technology (DRT) products. DRT provides state-of-the-art RF transceivers, DF antennas, signal processing exploitation, geolocation, and electronic attack applications for the US military, Five‑Eyes, and Intelligence Community.

Responsibilities

• Provide systems engineering expertise with developing SW Defined Radios for SIGINT and EW applications.
• Provide systems engineering guidance with signals exploitation, geolocation techniques, precision PNT, RF jamming modalities, information assurance, IA, and Cyber security.
• Lead product development systems activities/teams with use case analysis, requirements capture, allocation, and derivation, architectural analysis and design, system level testing, integration, verification and validation efforts, and transition to manufacturing.
• Support Business Development with customer meetings, product presentations and demonstrations, requirements elicitation, architecture development, and systems implementation.
• Provide subject matter expertise as a project design authority of HF, UHF, VHF, and SHF SIGINT and EW systems.
• Provide systems engineering expertise with SIGINT/EW solutions integration into military platforms and larger Enterprise level collection systems.
• Lead complex systems integration efforts of multi-disciplined engineering teams.
• Develop technical proposals and support cost estimation and evaluate competing product and solution offerings.
• Represent Thales at relevant industry forums.
• Serve as a customer liaison, supporting design reviews and other technical interchanges.
• Support field installation, testing, evaluation, and troubleshooting of equipment, along with government acceptance testing.

Qualifications

Required:

• U.S. Citizenship Required – ability to obtain and maintain U.S. Top Secret or SCI Level Security Clearance upon hire (current TS/SCI preferred).
• BSEE, BSCS, or equivalent; MSEE, MSCS or equivalent preferred.
• 8+ years as a Design/Systems Engineer.
• Strong presentation and writing skills; fluent in English.
• Experience with system level design, development, and testing of tactical, secure, state‑of‑the‑art military communications systems.
• Experience with requirements elicitation, decomposition, traceability, and lifecycle management.
• Knowledge of RF design, Digital design, Software design, and Information Security.
• Experience working in a laboratory environment with RF and Digital test equipment.

Preferred:

• Experience with developing Software Defined Radios.
• Experience with developing SIGINT/EW systems.
• Experience integrating SIGINT/EW systems into platforms and Enterprise collection systems.
• Experience working with Direction Finding (DF) and Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) collection systems.
• Experience with signals exploitation and Electronic Attack SW development.
• Information Assurance and Cyber security experience.

Benefits

• Competitive Salary
• Yearly Incentive Compensation Plan
• Medical insurance for self and eligible family members
• Generous 401(k) program – up to 7% company contribution and 100% immediate vesting
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Paid wellness, vacation, and holiday leave
• Paid maternity, paternity, and parental leave