Principal Systems Engineer - Edinburgh City Centre

Salary: £65,000 - 65,000 per year

Requirements:

• We are seeking an experienced Principal Systems Engineer to lead integration, test, evaluation and acceptance activities for advanced electro-optical and infrared sensing systems within the GCAP environment.
• We are looking for someone with experience leading system integration and test activities on complex engineered products, ideally within highly regulated industries such as aerospace, defence, sensing, or other safety-critical environments.
• We need proven experience in late lifecycle delivery, particularly post-critical design review integration, qualification, acceptance, and release.
• We require a strong systems engineering background covering requirements, architecture, interfaces, verification, and acceptance.
• Desirable: experience with model-based systems engineering (MBSE).
• Desirable: experience working with digital twins, synthetic environments, HIL/SIL environments, or virtual integration frameworks.
• Desirable: experience within electro-optical / infrared sensing systems (EOIR), mission systems, or sensor fusion environments.
• Desirable: experience defining test equipment, test environments, and facility requirements.
• This role is subject to pre-employment screening in line with the UK Governments Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS).
• Additional National Security Vetting may apply, which could include eligibility for Security Check (SC) or Developed Vetting (DV).

Responsibilities:

• We are responsible for defining and executing the system integration and verification strategy from detailed design through integration, qualification, acceptance, and transition to production.
• We lead integration and verification approaches appropriate for late-lifecycle delivery, ensuring readiness for hardware/software integration, qualification, acceptance, and release.
• We develop and maintain the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) electro-optical / infrared sensing systems ITEA master plan, including integration sequencing, verification logic, dependencies, risks, and maturity criteria.
• We define progressive integration strategies from component, subsystem, equipment, and system-level verification through formal acceptance.
• We lead and define ITEA-related strategy and associated systems artefacts, including ITEA requirements.
• We develop the system integration and test architecture, ensuring testability is designed into the product architecture.
• We define verification architectures including physical integration environments, hardware-in-the-loop environments, synthetic/digital test environments, and laboratory and field test configurations.
• We ensure requirements, interfaces, performance budgets, and verification methods remain aligned throughout integration.
• We lead development of the EOIR strategy for digital and synthetic integration/test environments.
• We define model-based verification approaches that enable early risk reduction, accelerated integration, and increased defect discovery prior to hardware availability.
• We support digital thread adoption between requirements, architecture, interfaces, models, and verification artefacts.
• We liaise with the wider GCAP Test & Integration community to ensure consistency, reuse of best practice, and alignment of facilities, tooling, and processes.
• We coordinate integration activities across EOIR, subsystem teams, software, electronics, mechanical, detector, optics, and processing disciplines.
• We support design reviews, verification reviews, readiness reviews, qualification reviews, and customer acceptance activities.
• We identify integration and verification risks early and develop mitigation plans.
• We support programme planning, schedule development, cost estimation, and technical maturity assessments.
• We provide technical leadership and mentoring to systems engineers supporting ITEA activities.

Technologies:

• Hardware
• Support
• Security
• Sensor Fusion

More:

We are Leonardo, a global leader in Aerospace, Defence, and Security, headquartered in Italy with over 53,000 people worldwide and 8,500 across 9 UK sites. This is a permanent, hybrid role based onsite in Edinburgh, offering a salary of £53,500 to £68,000. We offer a comprehensive, company-funded benefits package that supports wellbeing, career development, and work-life balance, including generous leave with up to 12 additional flexi-days each year, an award-winning pension with up to 15% employer contribution, free access to mental health support and financial advice, employee-led inclusion networks, a bonus scheme for management level and below, access to 4,000 online courses, a referral reward programme, flexible benefits worth up to £500 annually, and flexible working with hybrid options. We are committed to building an inclusive, accessible, and welcoming workplace and invite applicants to let us know about any accessibility requirements during the recruitment process.

last updated 35 week of 2026