Senior Systems Engineer

Synapse ITS; Plano (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Synapse ITS in Plano, TX seeks a Senior Systems Engineer to define and integrate system-level architectures for advanced traffic sensing, detection, communication, and control products. You will lead across hardware, embedded software, networking, IoT/cloud, and telemetry, translating market and regulatory needs into verifiable requirements, architecture, and verification plans.

Collaborating with Product Management, Hardware, Firmware, and field teams, you will guide lifecycle activities, risk

Qualifications

• Lead development and documentation of system architectures for traffic sensing, detection, and control.
• Translate market requirements into clear, measurable system requirements.
• Define system boundaries, interfaces, and data flows with subsystems.
• Allocate requirements across hardware, firmware/software, communications, power, IoT.
• Define and support system verification strategies and test plans.

Responsibilities

• Develop PRDs and System Requirements Specifications.
• Perform architectural trade studies on performance, cost, cybersecurity, and scalability.
• Lead system integration, verification, and validation activities.
• Lead requirements reviews, architecture reviews, and engineering peer reviews.
• Support Manufacturing, Quality, Applications Engineering during deployment and sustaining engineering.

Job description

Description

The Senior Systems Engineer is responsible for defining, developing, integrating, and validating system-level architectures for advanced traffic sensing, detection, communication, and control products and systems.

This role provides technical leadership across the product development lifecycle, translating market, customer, regulatory, and operational needs into system requirements, architectures, interfaces, and verification strategies. The Senior Systems Engineer works across electrical hardware, embedded software, communications, networking, power, mechanical systems, and IoT/cloud services to ensure products operate as reliable, maintainable, scalable, and integrated systems.

The position requires broad technical knowledge of technologies applicable to Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), including power distribution, solar power, electronic hardware, embedded systems, sensors, wired and wireless communications, TCP/IP networking, power line communication, industrial IoT, telemetry, remote monitoring, and functional safety.

The Senior Systems Engineer collaborates with Product Management, Applications Engineering, Hardware Engineering, Firmware/Software Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, and other stakeholders throughout the product lifecycle.

Requirements

• Lead development and documentation of system architectures for traffic sensing, detection, communication, and control products and integrated solutions.
• Translate market requirements, customer needs, use cases, regulatory requirements, and operational constraints into clear, measurable, and verifiable system and product requirements.
• Develop and maintain Product Requirements Documents (PRDs), System Requirements Specifications, Interface Control Documents (ICDs), system block diagrams, and other systems-engineering artifacts.
• Define system boundaries, functional decomposition, subsystem responsibilities, interfaces, data flows, operating modes, and system behaviors.
• Allocate requirements across hardware, firmware/software, communications, power, mechanical, IoT/cloud, and other subsystems and maintain requirements traceability.
• Research, evaluate, and qualify technologies, devices, SoCs, communication modules, sensors, and other components supporting product and platform architectures.
• Develop reusable platform architectures, components, interfaces, communication methods, and telemetry capabilities to increase design reuse and reduce development cycle time.
• Define system approaches for telemetry, configuration, remote diagnostics, health monitoring, event reporting, and device management.
• Perform architectural trade studies considering performance, reliability, cost, power, manufacturability, maintainability, cybersecurity, scalability, and lifecycle requirements.
• Define system operating modes, fault responses, degraded operation, fail-safe behaviors, and recovery strategies.
• Identify and manage technical risks using appropriate systems-engineering methods such as FMEA, design reviews, and technical risk assessments.
• Define and support system integration, verification and validation (V&V) strategies, acceptance criteria, qualification testing, and field trials.
• Lead system-level troubleshooting and root-cause analysis of complex field and product issues involving hardware, firmware/software, communications, power, networking, and customer infrastructure.
• Perform or support detailed hardware and embedded software development when required for prototyping, troubleshooting, or technical risk reduction.
• Lead and participate in requirements reviews, architecture reviews, design reviews, system readiness reviews, and engineering peer reviews.
• Support Manufacturing, Quality, Applications Engineering, and field teams during product introduction, deployment, and sustaining engineering.
• Identify opportunities to continuously improve systems-engineering practices, product architectures, development processes, and technical documentation.