Principal Systems Engineer

Principal Systems Engineer (E2E Technical Coordination)
Location: Portsmouth or Stevenage (minimum 3 days onsite) Type: Permanent / Contract Security Clearance: Eligible for UK Security Clearance

About the Role
KDC Projects is seeking an experienced Principal Systems Engineer to provide End-to-End (E2E) Technical Coordination across a complex system development programme. Working closely with the E2E Chief Engineer, you will be responsible for ensuring technical coherence across multiple subsystems, disciplines and stakeholders, supporting the successful delivery of system engineering, validation, verification and qualification activities.
This is a technically focused leadership role requiring strong systems engineering expertise, stakeholder management skills and the ability to coordinate activities across the full system lifecycle. You will work within an established programme, maintaining and evolving existing system engineering artefacts rather than developing them from first principles.

Key Responsibilities
Systems Engineering

• Lead and coordinate end-to-end system engineering activities across multiple subsystems and work packages.
• Develop, maintain and mature Concept of Operations (CONOPS) documentation.
• Manage user and mission requirements, including requirements derivation and flow-down.
• Maintain system engineering documentation and engineering management artefacts.
• Support the development and maturation of system and subsystem functional architectures.
• Coordinate performance, functional and security requirement analysis.
• Ensure consistency across operational, functional and non-functional requirements.
• Coordinate technical activities across internal teams, customers and partner organisations.

Validation, Verification & Qualification (VVQ)

• Support and coordinate system validation, verification and qualification activities.
• Develop and maintain validation strategies and validation logic plans.
• Define verification methods and means of compliance against system requirements.
• Coordinate system and subsystem testing activities.
• Support qualification programme planning, execution and reporting.
• Review and manage test procedures, test specifications and test reports.
• Support factory and site acceptance activities.

Technical Leadership & Delivery

• Provide technical leadership and coordination across multidisciplinary engineering teams.
• Support engineering planning, scheduling and work package management.
• Coordinate technical change management and impact assessments.
• Contribute to project roadmaps, delivery planning and milestone tracking.
• Support risk and opportunity management activities.
• Maintain Statements of Compliance and engineering delivery metrics.
• Ensure engineering activities are delivered to agreed quality, schedule and cost objectives.

Required Experience
We're particularly interested in candidates who can demonstrate experience in:

• Systems requirements capture, management and derivation.
• Functional architecture development and decomposition.
• End-to-end systems engineering across complex programmes.
• Verification, Validation and Qualification (VVQ / IVVQ / IVQ).
• Systems integration involving hardware and software elements.
• Technical planning and change management.
• Cross-functional stakeholder coordination.
• Management of complex system interfaces.
• Working within highly regulated, safety-critical or mission-critical environments.
• Supporting system leadership at Principal, Lead or Chief Engineer level.

Desirable Experience

• Space and satellite systems engineering.
• Defence or aerospace programmes.
• Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE).
• System performance analysis and modelling.
• Experience working with both new developments and legacy/re-use product integration.

Tools & Technologies
Candidates should have experience with some or all of the following:

• IBM DOORS
• Jira
• Confluence
• Windchill
• Python
• MATLAB

What We're Looking For
The successful candidate will be a Principal Engineer who thrives in a complex engineering environment and enjoys coordinating technical activities across multiple teams. You will be comfortable working at system level, balancing technical leadership, stakeholder engagement and programme delivery while ensuring technical consistency across the full solution.

This is an excellent opportunity to support a high-profile, cutting-edge programme at the forefront of advanced systems engineering.