Senior Lead Systems Specialist

Salary: £34,000 - 56,000 per year

Requirements:

• We are looking for a Senior or Lead Systems Engineer with strong systems engineering discipline and experience in high-assurance, regulated environments.
• You should have proven experience in requirements engineering and acceptance management for large-scale IT systems.
• You should have demonstrable experience working directly with the UK MOD or equivalent government bodies.
• You should have experience delivering IT systems through formal acceptance and assurance processes.
• You should have a strong understanding of the systems engineering lifecycle and governance.
• You should be able to operate effectively in secure, classified environments.
• You should have excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
• You should ideally have experience with defence IT infrastructure, secure networks, or mission-critical systems.
• You should ideally be familiar with MOD assurance frameworks and delivery governance.
• You should ideally have experience supporting formal audits or independent assurance reviews.

Responsibilities:

• We will ask you to lead the end-to-end requirements management lifecycle, from capture and baseline through to verification and acceptance.
• You will ensure requirements are clear, testable, traceable, and aligned to contractual and operational needs.
• You will maintain robust requirements traceability matrices linking requirements to design, implementation, and test evidence.
• You will manage requirements change control in line with programme governance.
• You will own and manage the acceptance strategy and acceptance plan for the IT delivery programme.
• You will define and agree acceptance criteria with MOD stakeholders.
• You will coordinate and oversee acceptance activities, ensuring objective evidence is produced and collated.
• You will support formal acceptance events, reviews, and assurance boards.
• You will ensure all acceptance evidence is complete, auditable, and compliant with defence standards.
• You will act as a primary technical interface with UK MOD representatives.
• You will lead technical discussions, reviews, and workshops with MOD stakeholders.
• You will provide clear, defensible positions on requirements compliance and acceptance status.
• You will support responses to MOD queries, assurance findings, and audit activity.
• You will provide technical leadership across systems engineering activities within the programme.
• You will ensure systems engineering practices align with recognised standards.
• You will support integration activities across infrastructure, applications, and security domains.
• You will mentor and guide engineers in requirements and acceptance best practice.
• You will produce and maintain high-quality systems engineering documentation, including requirements specifications, acceptance plans and reports, and compliance and traceability artefacts.
• You will ensure documentation meets MOD and programme governance standards.
• You will contribute to design reviews, readiness reviews, and assurance milestones.

Technologies:

• Support
• Security
• AI
• Machine Learning

More:

We are Leidos UK & Europe, a growing company using technology, engineering, and science to make the world safer, healthier, and more efficient. This role is based in Farnborough and requires High Developed Vetting (DV) security clearance. We offer meaningful and engaging careers, a collaborative culture, and support for your career goals alongside a healthy work-life balance. Our reward package includes a contributory pension scheme, private medical insurance, 33 days annual leave including public and privilege holidays, flexible benefits such as life assurance, health schemes, gym memberships, annual buy and sell holidays, and a cycle to work scheme, plus a flexi-time commitment. We are committed to diversity and inclusion, welcome applications from all parts of the community, and support reasonable adjustments during the application process. We work flexibly across home, office, and customer sites, and invest in technical academies, career rotations, and career development plans to help our people grow.

last updated 31 week of 2026