Systems Engineer

Own the system that sits between military sensors, decision-makers and effectors, and see it work in the hands of the people it was built for. Our Client is a sovereign UK defence AI company in Bristol. They are hiring a Systems Engineer with around two years’ professional experience to take their targeting and planning products from user need to proven capability: define what the system must do, design how its parts fit together, integrate it with the systems already in service, and verify it on exercise with Army units.

About Our Client

Our Client builds a sovereign targeting and planning suite for UK land forces: software that generates AI-ready target data at the sensor, enriches it for intelligence staff, and turns it into courses of action for operations and plans staff. Generate, enrich, decide: one chain, from the sensor to the decision. The company is UK-owned with no foreign shareholders and no parent company, and holds positions on Ministry of Defence framework agreements and a British Army digital programme. The team includes former Army officers who shaped the doctrine the software encodes, so you will learn the domain from people who have practised it.

The company is small by design. Engineers talk to end users directly, own whole features, and ship to live trials with Army units. There is no layer between you and the outcome.

The role

You will be the engineer who holds the whole system in your head. The military targeting and planning process is a chain of people, data and systems: sensors that find things, staff who decide what to do about them, and effectors that act. Our Client’s products have to fit into that chain alongside the command and control, fire control, intelligence and messaging systems already in an Army headquarters. Your job is to understand the chain end to end, turn what users need into requirements and architecture, make sure the parts integrate, and prove the result works where it will be used.

What that looks like week to week:

• Work with domain experts and MoD users to capture concepts of operations and user needs, then turn them into requirements, interface definitions and system architecture that software engineers can build against.
• Build models, simulations, test harnesses and analysis tools in Python to size designs, run trade studies, and back engineering decisions with evidence rather than opinion.
• Own integration: define the interfaces between Our Client’s products and the systems in an Army headquarters, plan the integration work, and lead the verification and validation that shows the capability works end to end.
• Deploy, configure and evaluate the system at MoD sites and on exercises, capture what users need, and feed it back into the requirements and the backlog within days.
• Contribute to the object model that underpins the products: what a target, a sensor, a task or a unit is, how they relate, and what can happen to them. If the word “ontology” is new to you, this is what it means in practice.
• Plan and track work packages in Jira, keep your code and models in Git, and leave documentation, trade studies and design review material the next engineer can use.

You will not be a requirements administrator or a documentation function. You will write Python most weeks; the systems view is what makes the engineering right.

What we are looking for

Essential:

• Around two years of professional engineering experience in a systems, software, integration or test role, in any sector.
• Working knowledge of systems engineering practice: requirements, architecture, interface management, integration, verification and validation, and lifecycle management. You can show where you have applied it, not just define it.
• Strong Python. You can build a model, a simulation, a test harness or an analysis tool from scratch, test it, and explain your design choices.
• Responsible, effective use of AI-assisted tools. You use tools such as Claude Code, Copilot or Cursor as a matter of course for code, models and documentation, you can show the difference it makes to your output, and you understand where it fails: you review and test what it generates, you own every line and every requirement that ships under your name, and you know what must never leave a secure environment.
• A systems mindset: you think about how components connect, where data comes from and goes to, what happens when a link fails, and how to model a domain as objects, relationships and actions.
• Working fluency with Git, Linux, Docker and an issue tracker such as Jira, and the discipline to use them properly on a small team.
• Clear written and spoken communication with people who are not engineers, including military users, and the confidence to challenge constructively.
• A degree in engineering, computer science, physics or a closely related subject, preferably from a UK university, or equivalent demonstrable capability.

Useful, not required:

• Familiarity with military targeting or planning processes (the joint targeting cycle, D3A or F3EAD, the combat estimate), or a willingness to learn them quickly from the people here who have run them.
• Experience with model-based systems engineering (SysML, Capella or similar) or a requirements tool such as DOORS, Jama or Polarion.
• Exposure to Cursor-on-Target, TAK, SAPIENT or other defence data standards, or to C4I and networked systems more generally.
• Exposure to machine learning, computer vision, signal processing or edge deployment.
• Any experience of working with, or inside, the UK Armed Forces or MoD.
• Existing SC or DV clearance.

Practical requirements

Location. The office is in Bristol city centre. The company has a hybrid culture, typically three days a week in the office with flexibility around project needs, and you must be able to commute to central Bristol.

Travel. Regular travel to MoD sites and Army units in the UK and occasional overnight stays on exercises.

Security clearance. You must hold current SC clearance or be able to obtain it. In practice, this means you have lived in the UK continuously for at least the last five years, have the unrestricted right to work in the UK, and have no other bar to vetting. Our Client sponsors the application. Some of the work is restricted to UK nationals.

Right to work. Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.

Pay: £30,000.00-£72,801.81 per year

Work Location: In person