Space Systems Engineer – MBSE & Specialty Engineering

Are you ready for your next career challenge?

Leidos Defense Sector provides a diverse portfolio of systems, solutions, and services covering land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace for customers worldwide. Solutions for Defense include enterprise and mission IT, large-scale intelligence systems, command and control, geospatial and data analytics, cybersecurity, logistics, training, and intelligence analysis and operations support. Our team is solving the world's toughest security challenges for customers with "can't fail" missions.

Leidos' Defense Space Business Area is seeking a Specialty Systems Engineer to join a collaborative Systems Engineering Integration and Test team developing a variety of sensor payloads for space. This is an exciting opportunity to leverage your expertise across risk, reliability/availability, radiation, and cybersecurity disciplines — combined with strong MBSE modeling skills — while contributing to our national defense mission.

Position Overview:

We are seeking an experienced Specialty Systems Engineer with strength in risk analysis and one or more specialty disciplines (reliability, availability/maintainability, radiation effects analysis, or cybersecurity) and hands-on proficiency with Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) in Cameo Systems Modeler. The person fulfilling this role must be a skilled communicator who collaborates closely with subject matter experts (SMEs), builds relationships across disciplines, and translates specialty analysis into actionable system models and requirements.

Key Responsibilities:

Risk Management

• Conduct comprehensive risk assessments to identify, measure, and monitor potential threats to company assets, profitability, and operational integrity.
• Develop and enforce risk management policies, frameworks, and internal controls aligned with industry standards.
• Design and implement actionable risk mitigation plans, collaborating cross-functionally with department leaders to reduce exposures.
• Prepare regular risk reports for executive leadership and ensure ongoing compliance with regulatory requirements and governance standards and run risk management review boards.

Specialty Engineering (Risk / Reliability / Availability / Radiation / Cybersecurity)

• Conduct or facilitate reliability and availability/maintainability analyses (e.g., FMEA, FTA, RBD, RAM predictions) to identify, measure, and mitigate threats to system performance and mission success.
• Support the performance of radiation effects analysis for space systems (e.g., total ionizing dose, single-event effects, radiation hardness assurance) through interaction with subject matter exports
• Support cybersecurity risk assessments (e.g., threat modeling, vulnerability analysis, RMF/ATO activities) to ensure systems meet mission assurance and security requirements.
• Monitor and report specialty performance metrics to program and executive leadership, including risk exposure, reliability/availability figures of merit, radiation tolerance margins, and cybersecurity posture, and recommend corrective actions.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with program management, design engineering, and logistics to integrate specialty findings — risk, reliability/availability, radiation, or cybersecurity drivers — into program baselines, design trade-offs, and compliance with applicable standards (e.g., MIL-STD-785, MIL-HDBK-338, NIST RMF).

MBSE / Cameo Modeling

• Develop and maintain structural, behavioral, and parametric system models using SysML in Cameo Systems Modeler, leveraging Teamwork Cloud for collaborative, version-controlled model management.
• Translate specialty analyses (risk, reliability, availability, radiation, or cybersecurity data) into model-based artifacts, establishing bi-directional traceability from stakeholder needs through requirements, architecture, and verification and validation (V&V).
• Map system-of-system architectures and define physical, logical, and software interfaces, integrating specialty engineering inputs (e.g., reliability block diagrams, risk registers, radiation margin data, security control mappings) directly into the digital model.
• Execute trade study analysis focusing on -illity related requirement and risk posture

Required Skills:

• Experience as risk manager and running risk review boards
• Superior organization and leadership skills and attention to detail
• High level of commitment to quality work product and organizational ethics, integrity, and compliance
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, team environment
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to effectively communicate, both written and verbally
• Demonstrated decision making and problem-solving skills
• Detail-oriented with the ability to multi-task and meet deadlines with minimal supervision

Basic Qualifications:

• BS degree and 4+ years of relevant experience, or Masters with 2+ years of relevant experience
• Must be a US Citizen
• Must have an active Secret Clearance
• Experience modeling in Cameo Systems Modeler (or equivalent) using SysML, and experience using Teamwork Cloud
• Experience in risk management and one or more specialty disciplines: reliability engineering, availability/maintainability analysis, radiation effects analysis, or cybersecurity
• Experience deriving requirements for complex electrical, mechanical, optical, and software systems
• Familiarity with technical data management, report writing and support tasks
• Demonstrated ability in change management, process improvement, project planning, and stakeholder management
• Ability to demonstrate a commitment to personal and corporate excellence, ethical behavior and integrity

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with space systems, specifically space payloads
• Object Management Group (OMG) Certified System Modeler Professional (OCSMP) certification
• INCOSE Systems Engineering Professional (SEP) certification (ASEP or CSEP)
• Certification or training relevant to specialty area (e.g., ASQ CRE for reliability, Security+/CISSP for cybersecurity)

Why Leidos?

At Leidos, we deliver innovative solutions through the efforts of our diverse and talented people who are dedicated to our customers' success. We empower our teams, contribute to our communities, and operate sustainably. Everything we do is built on a commitment to do the right thing for our customers, our people, and our community. Our Mission, Vision, and Values guide the way we do business.

If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo — because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 — and moving faster than anyone else dares.

Original Posting:

Pay Range:

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.