System Engineer

PteroDynamics Inc.; Colorado Springs (CO); On-site; USD 115,000 - 135,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Stock options

Company-sponsored medical insurance

Dental

Vision

Life insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid time off

Paid holidays

Paid sick time

Collaborative startup environment

Job summary

PteroDynamics Inc. seeks a hands-on Systems Engineer to support the development, integration, testing, fielding, and sustainment of Transwing aircraft systems.

This role spans the product lifecycle, from user needs and requirements through architecture, design, integration, verification, and operational readiness. The ideal candidate collaborates across engineering, manufacturing, flight test, operations, and program teams, performing trade studies, system integration, testing, and root-cause

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or a related technical field.
• Experience in systems engineering, product development, or autonomous systems.
• Hands-on product lifecycle experience from concept to sustainment.
• Experience performing trade studies and requirements analysis.
• Ability to manage requirements across design, development, and fielding.
• Experience creating requirements traceability matrices and verification plans.
• Ability to lead technical reviews and coordinate cross-functional teams.

Responsibilities

• Support full product lifecycle for Transwing aircraft systems from concept to sustainment.
• Develop and maintain requirements, architectures, and system specifications.
• Perform trade studies and analyses to support decision-making.
• Manage requirements with configuration control and traceability.
• Plan and lead system reviews and design reviews.
• Collaborate with engineering, manufacturing, flight test, and operations teams.

Skills

Systems engineering

Requirements management

Technical trade studies

System integration and testing

Lab and field testing

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or related field

Tools

Requirements management tools

Configuration management/PLM tools

Job description

PteroDynamics is seeking a hands-on Systems Engineer to support the development, integration, testing, fielding, and sustainment of Transwing aircraft systems. This role spans the product lifecycle, from user needs and requirements through architecture, design, integration, verification, and operational readiness.

The ideal candidate has broad technical expertise and can collaborate across engineering, manufacturing, flight test, operations, and program teams. Responsibilities include requirements management, technical trade studies, system integration and testing, troubleshooting, root cause analysis, and corrective action. This role requires comfort working at both the system level and directly in the lab or field within a fast-paced startup environment.

Description

PteroDynamics Inc. designs superior autonomous vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft systems that fly faster and go farther to reach remote locations without runways, even in harsh conditions. PteroDynamics' Transwing aircraft is unlike any other VTOL system, performing like a great fixed-wing aircraft with superb VTOL capabilities. Transwing aircraft unfold their wings to transition smoothly and quickly between vertical and horizontal flight, overcoming limitations inherent in other VTOL designs by combining the speed, range, and endurance of fixed-wing aircraft with superior VTOL performance in an efficient, highly automated platform. The Transwing is ideal for automating time-sensitive delivery of critical high-value payloads to hard-to-reach locations, including maritime logistics support, payload delivery to remote locations without airstrips, and reconnaissance and surveillance. Seeing is believing. Visit PteroDynamics.com for details and videos.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Support the full product lifecycle for Transwing aircraft systems, from user need and concept development through design, integration, verification, validation, fielding, operations, and sustainment.
• Develop, analyze, decompose, and maintain end-user requirements, system performance requirements, functional requirements, design requirements, interface requirements, and system specifications.
• Develop and maintain functional and physical architectures for aircraft systems, subsystems, ground systems, support equipment, and operational workflows.
• Perform trade studies, requirements analyses, system performance analyses, and other structured evaluations to support technical decision-making and system optimization.
• Manage requirements throughout design, development, integration, test, fielding, and sustainment using disciplined requirements management and configuration control practices.
• Create and maintain requirements traceability, verification plans, compliance matrices, and related systems engineering artifacts.
• Plan, coordinate, and lead system requirements reviews, system design reviews, test readiness reviews, flight readiness reviews, and other systems engineering technical reviews.
• Integrate technical efforts across engineering teams to ensure subsystem designs, interfaces, test activities, and program decisions are optimized at the system level.
• Work closely with mechanical, electrical, software, controls, manufacturing, flight test, operations, quality, suppliers, and program management teams to resolve system-level issues.
• Support system integration, lab testing, ground testing, flight testing, demonstrations, and field operations.
• Identify, assess, manage, and communicate technical risks, including system performance risks, integration risks, interface risks, schedule risks, verification risks, and operational risks.
• Support root cause analysis and corrective action development for issues discovered during design, integration, testing, flight operations, or fielded system use.
• Develop, document, and implement corrective actions in collaboration with cross-functional engineering and operations teams.
• Support verification and validation planning, including definition of verification methods, test procedures, analysis methods, inspection criteria, demonstration criteria, and acceptance criteria.
• Analyze test results, operational data, anomalies, and system performance against requirements and expected behavior.
• Support development of system-level concepts of operation, mission use cases, operational scenarios, system interfaces, and sustainment concepts.
• Generate and maintain technical documentation including system specifications, requirements documents, trade studies, architecture descriptions, interface control documents, test plans, test reports, risk registers, review packages, and decision records. Ensure strong documentation, requirements traceability, technical rigor, and knowledge capture across the engineering lifecycle.
• Travel occasionally to support flight test, field operations, customer demonstrations, supplier activities, or other program needs.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or a related technical field.
• Professional experience in systems engineering, product development, aerospace engineering, autonomous systems, robotics, automotive systems, defense systems, or another complex multidisciplinary hardware/software environment.
• Hands-on experience supporting the product lifecycle from user need and requirements definition through design, integration, test, fielding, and sustainment.
• Experience performing trade studies, requirements analysis, system analysis, or other structured technical decision-support activities.
• Experience developing and decomposing end-user requirements, performance requirements, functional requirements, design requirements, and system specifications.
• Demonstrated experience managing requirements throughout design, development, integration, test, and fielding.
• Experience creating requirements traceability matrices, verification cross-reference matrices, compliance matrices, or similar tools used to map verification activities to requirements.
• Ability to plan and lead system requirements reviews, design reviews, test readiness reviews, and other technical reviews.
• Broad technical knowledge across multiple engineering domains and ability to communicate effectively with subject matter experts across disciplines.
• Ability to integrate cross-functional engineering efforts and optimize technical decisions at the system level.
• Experience identifying, assessing, and managing technical risk.
• Hands-on mindset and willingness to work directly in the lab, in the field, and around aircraft hardware, test equipment, and operational systems.
• Strong analytical, communication, writing, presentation, and documentation skills.
• Demonstrated ability to work in a fast-paced R&D or startup environment with novel technologies, changing priorities, and a high level of uncertainty.
• U.S. Citizenship or Permanent Resident Status required.
• Ability to work on-site in Colorado Springs, CO.

Other Qualifications & Desired Competencies

• Experience integrating hardware and software onto or into air vehicles, including avionics, sensors, payloads, embedded computing systems, communications equipment, software configurations, interfaces, and related aircraft-level integration, test, and troubleshooting activities.
• Experience with system architecture development, functional analysis, interface definition, and model-based systems engineering methods or tools.
• Familiarity with requirements management tools, issue tracking systems, configuration management systems, PLM tools, or related engineering data environments.
• Experience with verification and validation of complex hardware/software systems.
• Experience supporting flight test, ground test, system integration labs, hardware-in-the-loop testing, or field operations.
• Experience performing root cause analysis and developing, implementing, and verifying corrective actions.
• Familiarity with reliability, maintainability, safety, airworthiness, certification, or design assurance practices.
• Familiarity with UAS operational concepts, aviation regulations, military standards, ASTM standards, FAA processes, or airworthiness qualification methods.
• Experience developing concepts of operation, use cases, mission scenarios, system behavior descriptions, or operational support concepts.
• Experience with technical risk registers, risk burn-down plans, mitigation planning, and risk communication to technical and program leadership.
• Ability to balance technical rigor with practical execution in a resource-constrained, fast-moving startup environment.
• Comfortable working across concept development, engineering design, lab test, flight test, field operations, and sustainment.
• Bias toward disciplined documentation, experimental validation, rapid learning, and system-level optimization.

Company Values

• People
• Accountability
• Knowledge

Compensation

$115,000 - $135,000 per year

What We Offer

At PteroDynamics, you will have the opportunity to significantly impact the future of aerial technology through creativity and innovation.

• competitive salary
• stock options
• company-sponsored medical insurance
• dental
• vision
• term life insurance with an AD&D rider
• 401(k) plan with up to 3% matching by the company
• long-term disability
• paid time off
• paid holidays
• paid sick time
• collaborative, inclusive working environment in an exciting, growing startup company.

Note

This information in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the employee(s) incumbent in this position. To perform this job successfully, the incumbents will possess the skills, aptitudes, and abilities to perform each duty proficiently.

PteroDynamics is an Equal Opportunity Employer, drug-free workplace, and complies with ADA regulations as applicable.