Lead Systems Engineer: Autonomous UAVs & AI Co-Pilot

Archangel Autonomy; Oxford; On-site; GBP 85,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

5% employer pension

Private Medical Insurance

Relocation Support

Cycle-to-work

Team lunches

Annual travel voucher

Job summary

Archangel Autonomy is seeking a Lead Systems Engineer in Oxford, UK to shape the architecture and requirements for a new UAV product. You will define CONOPS, top-level requirements and system interfaces, while steering technology choices and certification discussions.

The role demands ownership of the technical baseline and driving a robust SE practice across hardware and software integration. You will lead the creation of a traceable, AI-enabled SE workflow, mentor junior engineers, and push

Qualifications

• 5+ years in systems engineering for complex systems with full product lifecycle exposure (concept through to fielded products).
• Proven ability to take design authority and make authoritative technical decisions on complex systems.
• Experience shipping real products, ideally with high assurance requirements (e.g. DO-178, DO-254, ISO 26262).
• Experience establishing engineering processes in growing organisations, ideally smaller companies with broad exposure.
• Working knowledge of product security standards and quality compliance frameworks (ISO 27001, AS 9100, ISO 9001).
• Hands-on experience with hardware and software system integration.
• Strong technical judgement balancing startup speed with rigour.
• Demonstrated interest in AI tooling and pioneering new approaches.

Responsibilities

• Be the design authority for a new UAS product and define system architecture, CONOPS, and top-level requirements.
• Lead technology selection decisions and trade studies and manage system performance budgets across subsystems.
• Decide on system interfaces and integration strategies and act as technical authority in customer and certification discussions.
• Own the technical baseline informing future product development and build a new systems engineering process for the team.
• Develop a minimum viable systems engineering practice, balancing rigour and speed and implement robust requirements management and interface control.
• Guide junior engineers in building systems engineering tools that integrate with developer workflows.

Skills

Systems engineering

Technical leadership

Hardware and software integration

Risk and trade-off judgement

AI tooling interest

Tools

MBSE

DO-178/DO-254/ISO 26262

ISO 27001

Job description

Archangel Autonomy is seeking a Lead Systems Engineer in Oxford, UK to shape the architecture and requirements for a new UAV product. You will define CONOPS, top-level requirements and system interfaces, while steering technology choices and certification discussions.

The role demands ownership of the technical baseline and driving a robust SE practice across hardware and software integration. You will lead the creation of a traceable, AI-enabled SE workflow, mentor junior engineers, and push