Systems Engineer

Crawley, Sussex
Thales
Location: Crawley, United Kingdom

Thales people provide armed forces customers with operational advantage at every decisive moment throughout the mission. Defence and armed forces customers rely on us to deliver the full range of defence mission systems solutions at land, sea, and air. Our platforms extend across the battlespace including Above and Sonar, Electronic Combat, and Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance systems.

Together we offer fantastic opportunities for committed employees to learn and develop their career with us. At Thales UK, we research, develop, and supply technology and services that impact the lives of millions of people each day to make life better, and keep us safer. We innovate across five major industries; Aerospace, Defence, Ground Transportation, Security and Space. Your health and well-being matters to us and that’s why we offer you the flexibility to do what’s important to you; whether that’s part time hours, job sharing, home working, or the ability to flex your start and finish times. Where possible, we support a working pattern that suits your lifestyle and helps you reach your ambitions.

Systems Engineer – Above Water Systems (AWS)

Crawley, Reading, Templecombe & Bristol

If you have an interest in a career in Systems Engineering and would like to work on exciting projects in a rapidly growing business line, then please express your interest today!

We want to hear from you if:

• Have a background in Engineering or an understanding of Systems Engineering lifecycles.
• You are interested in working on one of the 5 exciting projects AWS is working on (listed below).

About the role:

As the Systems Engineer, you will provide cover for an Acquisition Technical Support role as part of the Miecznik integrated engineering team.

You will work in an international multidisciplinary team. Your team consists of representatives of the customer, suppliers of subsystems and other parties involved. In the team, you are responsible for the IFF subsystem and its integration into the Combat Management System. Activities include, amongst others:

• Discuss operational needs together with the customer.
• Define interfaces between the Thales command & control system and third party subsystems.
• Demonstrate the solution to the customer.
• Build and maintain a close engineering collaboration with subcontracting organisation to ensure that the all subsystems fit and perform in the Solution.
• System engineer from the work package appointed as POC towards a given external subcontracted product.
• Define the Technical Agreements with third party subsystems.
• Organise supplier meetings.
• Coordinate and lead technical discussions.
• Align technical understanding for the interface solution.
• Report progress for the supplier into the delivery team.
• Manage supplier related change requests and problem reports.
• Review supplier documentation.
• Pull supplier information into ICS level documentation.
• Report any schedule changes.
• Provide input to requirements where appropriate including traceability to supplier requirements.
• Contribute to engineering and customer meetings where appropriate, including DDQS reviews.

About you:

• You are able to use a range of IT tools (e.g. MS Office, MS Visio, etc.).
• You will have a sound ability to use system engineering tools (e.g. DOORS, Enterprise Architect, Capella, JIRA).
• You should have strong interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate at all levels in the spoken and written word.
• You will have the ability to write clear and concise documents that clearly articulate complex technical detail.

Knowledge and Experience:

• Demonstrated knowledge of the full systems engineering life cycle, from concept design, requirements capture and management, system and subsystem design, system integration through to test strategies and acceptance, within a systems of systems context.
• Experience of developing real-time or near real-time distributed systems in a highly complex environment.
• Naval domain experience (desired).
• IFF design and integration experience (desired).
• Supplier management (desired).

Desirable Qualifications and Certification:

• HNC/HND/Engineering Degree or equivalent.
• Relevant experience in systems engineering.

Why AWS?

What do we do?

The world’s oceans present one of the most challenging and complex environments on earth, the systems that we design and support in AWS help naval fleets achieve and maintain tactical and strategic advantage in all situations. We support naval forces across the globe, with a full range of combat management systems, system integration and naval services. Through persistent evolution, including cyber security and higher levels of automation, we keep the customer’s systems ahead of threats. Our next-generation predictive maintenance increases operational readiness and reduces maintenance time and costs across entire fleets. We are proud to help our customers master their decisive moments with decisive technology.

What’s exciting about our projects?

We work closely with the customer, building strong relationships and getting to the heart of their needs, enabling us to provide innovative solutions. In AWS you will be able to ‘experience’ the products you are working on in real time at specific locations.

What do the team like best about being in AWS-UK?

The culture is inclusive, supportive and diverse with varying levels of experience in the team to support professional growth. There is lots of scope to travel in certain roles, providing invaluable international experience. AWS work collaboratively with other parts of Thales on Bid and Projects which are critical and central to our success, this provides important cross-sectional experience to the team.

What is unique or attractive about the project work that AWS do?

We work jointly with the Netherlands and other big defence suppliers, we are product focused, working on highly interesting work such as systems of systems. We engage on high profile Projects within and outside of Thales, delivering capabilities to UK and Allies.

For Candidates

What training / upskilling pathways do AWS offer?

For functional skills we offer on the job training, ulearn and technically specific courses. For domain skills (e.g. combat system engineering) we have training courses provided by the Business Line. We assign ‘buddies’ from the Netherlands who act as mentors to new starters and support them in their roles.

For candidates interested in a secondment:

AWS can consider candidates from any job family who want to develop their Systems knowledge and work on exciting projects for both domestic (MOD) customer and export customers. We offer roles that have high levels of travel or have lower levels of travel – but not none. For those interested, AWS can also support an international secondment to the Netherlands.

Projects:

What Projects is AWS working on?

There are currently 5 main project areas:

• Type 31 Design and Build – providing the Integrated Mission System to five new frigates for the UK Royal Navy.
• Type 31 Shore Integration Facility – This programme is key for the future performance of the Type 31 platform. The SIF is the critical component that supports the Navy’s enhancement of the Type 31 programme, and will lead to future work for Thales as we support our customers.
• Capability insertion programme – Equipment and sensors integration (sits within the Type 31 SIF).
• Miecznik Frigate Programme – An export to the Polish Navy to deliver three new, highly capable frigates. This multi-entity project will see close working with the customer community as we design and develop a world leading integrated combat system based on the BL’s products.
• R&D (Self and Customer funded) – Reviewing how we support our future customers and inform our Product Roadmaps. This project looks at areas of disaggregated and federated training, the use of autonomous assets within a naval domain, and the support to UK MOD’s various R&D programmes into future capability, these are opportunities for self-starters to work with a broad range of stakeholders on technically challenging problems.
• Bid and Proposals – Fuelling our growth over time, and destined to support the capture of £1Bn+ of work in the coming few years, we require a continuous effort to have people work on our bids and proposals. This will necessitate working closely with our colleagues from the BL in a multi-entity context.

What skill-set / future skills will a role in AWS provide a candidate with?

• Working with complexity
• Managing stakeholders
• Working internationally
• Understanding customer needs
• Estimating work
• Managing work packages
• Strategic outsourcing

What do development / career opportunities look like?

AWS are growing and will continue to do so, this leads to opportunities to grow with the domain, and positions where engineers can take on technical lead or engineering management roles as more and more programmes come online. The opportunity to get high-value bid experience is also available for those interested.

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