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Merlin Labs (NASDAQ: MRLN) is a publicly traded aerospace and defense company developing autonomous flight systems for commercial and military aircraft. The company has demonstrated its non-human pilot autonomy platform through hundreds of autonomous flights from facilities in New Zealand, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.
You will lead Merlin's features systems engineering function as a strategic technology leader, not just a practitioner. You will own the development roadmap, strategy, processes, and standards for systems engineering, evolving them as the program progresses toward certification. You will manage systems engineering tasking across the organization, aligning hardware, software, safety, and flight controls disciplines around a shared technical plan.
Key responsibilities include:
- Setting technical direction for concepts of operation, functional and physical system architecture, and system interfaces across Merlin products, personally owning critical architecture decisions
- Defining features, functions, and autonomous behaviors for each sub-system, ensuring traceability to system-level requirements and the safety case
- Leading Safety, Security, and Human Factors teams to keep them central to architecture and requirements decisions without slowing development pace
- Partnering with Core Architecture and Chief Engineer organizations to drive engineering strategy and execution
- Representing Merlin's systems engineering artifacts (requirements, architecture, interface definitions) in reviews with customers, suppliers, and regulatory authorities
- Building, hiring, and developing the systems engineering team, setting expectations, mentoring technical leads, and scaling the organization
- Owning system and sub-system-level requirements, including development, validation, and traceability across all disciplines
- Leading tech strategy on test methods, testing strategies, and verification/validation activities from simulation through flight test
- Collaborating with executive leadership and program leads to prioritize work and communicate technical risk and tradeoffs
You are drawn to the hardest version of this problem: bringing autonomy to certified commercial and military aviation where the technology is new, stakes are real, and the playbook is still being written. You have built and run systems engineering strategically, partnering with business and product teams to lead system expectations, requirements, and verification strategy on new product development programs. You can turn ambiguous concepts into defined, testable, certifiable systems and explain design intent and safety cases to engineers, executives, customers, suppliers, and regulators with equal credibility.
You have worked on safety-critical systems, know how to keep safety and human factors at the forefront while schedules push hard, and set systems engineering plans, processes, and standards that let small, fast-moving teams execute without losing rigor. You align disciplines around a shared technical picture and hold the line when they disagree. You build and develop managers and engineers as readily as you build architectures, hiring strong systems talent and mentoring them into technical leaders.
QUALIFICATIONS:
- BS in Electrical, Aerospace, Systems Engineering, or related field; MS or PhD preferred
- 15+ years of systems engineering experience (10+ with MS, 8+ with PhD), including at least 4 years managing systems engineering managers
- Specific experience in Mission Autonomy and Vehicle Autonomy development, including AI aspects in autonomy system engineering
- Demonstrated ability to define system-level requirements, architecture, and interfaces, and drive teams on requirements validation and verification through to system-level confidence
- Proven record solving complex architectural and systems engineering problems on new product development programs
- Experience in early-stage R&D on safety-critical systems with sound judgment about when to move fast and when to hold the line
- Experience with requirements management tools, processes, and best practices; ability to establish them for growing teams
- Hands-on experience certifying avionics equipment using ARP4754A, RTCA DO-178B/C, and DO-254 for safety-critical systems
- Track record collaborating across engineering domains, customers, suppliers, and partners; earning credibility with technical teams and senior stakeholders
- Experienced in hiring, developing, and retaining strong systems engineering talent and leadership coaching
- Demonstrated development and deployment of systems engineering processes for business and teams
- Comfortable with leading AI-based tools and frameworks; ability to implement best practices to automate systems engineering deliverables and processes
- Experience developing, executing, and monitoring Agile framework-based system-level releases using tools like Jira
Nice-to-have qualifications include: ARP4761A and MIL-STD-882E knowledge; FAA, EASA, DoD airworthiness and certification experience with direct regulatory authority interaction; automatic flight controls, flight management, or display systems experience; software requirements development and verification oversight; FAA, EASA, DoD regulations and standards knowledge; model-based systems engineering (MBSE) experience; familiarity with Simulink, Cameo, IADS, Jama; experience building systems engineering functions at early-stage or high-growth companies.
