Staff Systems Engineer - R&D

ON.energy; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

ON.energy is seeking a Senior Systems Engineer to act as a technical originator and design authority for new products. You will own requirements development, drive early prototyping, and coordinate with vendors to ensure robust grid-scale energy storage system design.

Residing in the R&D team, you will lead architecture definition, prototype planning, and design reviews to de-risk concepts and support transition to production.

Qualifications

• Develop and maintain system-level requirements documents that capture functional, performance, environmental, safety, and regulatory requirements.

Responsibilities

• Monitor market signals and translate unmet needs into preliminary product concepts.
• Conduct early-stage feasibility studies and down-select concepts.
• Present concept proposals to leadership for stage-gate review.
• Develop and maintain system-level requirements documents.
• Decompose requirements into subsystem specs.
• Define architectures for new products and produce system block diagrams.
• Plan prototyping activities and define success criteria.
• Lead preliminary design reviews (PDRs).
• Interface with component vendors and negotiate specifications.
• Evaluate vendors and support supplier selection.
• Align supplier readiness with the supply chain team.
• Design trade studies and maintain risk register.
• Facilitate cross-functional alignment and design transfer.
• Provide support during initial product deployment and issue resolution.
• Capture field insights to inform ongoing improvements.

Job description

ON.energyis building the backbone of energy and AI infrastructure powering grid-safe data centers and mission-critical facilities. The company supplies and operates hyperscale power systems that solve the toughest resilience challenges, delivering custom solutions for AI data centers, mission-critical facilities, and front-of-the-meter assets. ON recently announced a 5GW partnership, with 3GW currently under construction across multiple hyperscale data center campuses. With patented technology and proprietary software,ON.energydevelops projects worldwide that set new benchmarks for resilience.

ROLE SUMMARY

The Senior Systems Engineer will serve as a technical originator and design authority for new ON.energy products. This role is responsible for identifying and shaping new product concepts, leading engineering teams through preliminary design, and supporting the transition from prototype to full productization. The Senior Systems Engineer will own requirements development, drive early-stage prototyping, coordinate with supply vendors on component engineering, and apply structured qualitative decision-making to navigate the trade-offs inherent in grid-scale energy storage system design. Residing within the R&D team, this position ensures that ON.energy’s product pipeline is grounded in sound, agile systems engineering practice.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Product Concept Origination

• Opportunity Identification: Monitor market signals, customer feedback, field performance data, and technology trends to identify opportunities for new products or significant architectural evolution of existing ON.energy platforms. Translate unmet needs into preliminary product concepts with clear value propositions.
• Feasibility Assessment: Conduct early-stage technical feasibility studies, evaluating product suppliers, novel topologies, and control strategies to down-select concepts before committing engineering resources. Coordinate internal and external subject matter expertise review and feedback into all evaluations.
• Concept Documentation: Author concept proposals that articulate the technical approach, target specifications, competitive differentiation, key risks, and resource estimates. Present concepts to R&D leadership and cross-functional stakeholders for stage-gate review.

Requirements Development and Management

• System Requirements Authoring: Develop and maintain system-level requirements documents that capture functional, performance, environmental, safety, and regulatory requirements for new products. Ensure requirements are traceable, testable, and aligned with customer and grid code obligations.
• Requirements Flow-Down: Decompose system requirements into subsystem and component specifications. Coordinate with discipline engineers to ensure consistent interpretation and compliance.

Preliminary Design Leadership

• Architecture Definition: Lead the definition of system architectures for new products, including power conversion topology, DC bus design, protection and isolation strategy, control hierarchy, and mechanical/thermal layout. Produce system block diagrams, interface control documents, and preliminary design packages.
• Prototyping and Early Validation: Plan and oversee prototyping activities to retire key technical risks early in the design cycle. Define prototype scope, success criteria, and test plans. Coordinate rapid-build efforts across hardware, firmware, and test teams.
• Design Reviews: Organize and lead preliminary design reviews (PDRs).
• Vendor Technical Interface: Serve as the primary engineering point of contact with component and subsystem vendors. Communicate technical requirements, review vendor design proposals, and negotiate specification compliance.
• Vendor Qualification and Selection: Lead technical evaluation of prospective vendors through design audits, capability assessments, and prototype sample testing. Provide engineering input to make/buy decisions and vendor selection trade studies.
• Supply Chain De-Risking: Align early stage reviews of supplier readiness with supply chain team.

Qualitative Decision-Making and Trade Studies

• Structured Trade Analysis: Design and facilitate trade studies that weigh product success criteria.
• Risk-Informed Prioritization: Maintain a living technical risk register for each product development program. Prioritize risk-retirement activities based on consequence and likelihood, and ensure mitigation plans are resourced and tracked.
• Cross-Functional Alignment: Facilitate decision-making across engineering, product management, operations, and supply chain stakeholders.
• Design Transfer: Support the transition of validated designs from R&D into product engineering.
• Production Issue Resolution: Provide systems-level engineering support during initial product deployment. Triage integration and commissioning issues, lead root-cause investigations, and implement design corrections with the help of other R&D verticals.
• Continuous Improvement: Feed field performance data and production lessons-learned back into the design process.

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