Title:  Scientist, Systems Engineer

Job Title:  Scientist, Systems Engineer

Job Code:  24091

Job Location: Herndon, VA

Job Schedule: 9/80

Job Description:  

The Advanced Concept Engineer (ACE) provides the strategic technical leadership to draw upon L3Harris' technical competencies to meet the business needs of L3Harris and its customers. The ACE is the technical interface between L3Harris and our customers’ engineering staff, supporting the Business Development staff in the creation of new business opportunities. The successful ACE will engage with customer, engineering, operations, and management personnel to define and document the customer’s mission needs, CONOPS and requirements; perform trade studies; engage L3Harris Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to architect an affordable solution carrying acceptable risk; and provide technical leadership to capture and proposal efforts. The ACE considers the needs, resources, and constraints, including the customer mission, budget limitations, technical preferences, physics boundaries, and the political climate building trust and recognition with the customer.  This role requires experience in systems engineering, system-level architecture development, competitive assessment, cost/benefit analyses, and technical management.

The ACE should have working knowledge in multiple technical domains, learning agility and an entrepreneurial personality.  The role requires demonstrated leadership across multiple disciplines, with significant expertise in model-based design and operations for large scale networks integrating multiple technologies (terrestrial, radio, satellite) and system life-cycle sustainment. The individual will work directly with business development and senior management to define solutions against customer needs and document in technical presentations, white papers and proposals. Demonstrated communication and interpersonal skills coupled with a proven ability to work with a large pool of internal and external partners are required.

Essential Functions: 

• Interpret customers’ mission needs; identify mission gaps and customer priorities and challenges in closing these gaps
  • Advocates the customer’s critical needs to internal stakeholders
  • Roadmaps organic technology, discretionary funding, external partner capabilities, and customer funded studies to new business opportunities
  • Assesses competitors and potential partners to define win strategies that maximize value to customers and L3Harris against customer mission needs and requirements
• Evaluates customer and operational needs to help define and coordinate high level system performance, physical, functional, and program interface requirements
  • Synthesis and life cycle ownership of system architecture aligned to mission needs
  • Development of Use Cases, Concept of Operations (CONOPS) or Operational Descriptions Documents (ODD)
  • Generation and assessment of system-level architecture options; decomposing opportunity to configuration items in a compressive value chain framework
  • Identifies L3Harris capabilities demonstratable to customers and develops demo scenarios showing L3Harris solution’s benefits vs. operational needs
• Leads the development of system-level solutions to customer needs
  • Demonstrates broad knowledge of relevant technology and solution providers; accesses SMEs as needed to refine technical content and validate feasibility
  • Determines how requirements can be met with existing internal and external capabilities and assesses impact on cost and mission operations from relaxation or tightening of the requirements
  • Assess and provides direction for make/buy decisions and selection of suppliers, including recommendations on strategic partners
  • Leads and performs trade studies for both tactical and strategic technical decisions for captures and proposals
• Facilitates technical coordination between external customer’s engineers, industry engineers and internal engineering groups to articulate technical issues, serving as technical advocate and voice of the customer
• Prepares and presents technical information that addresses specific subjects, with technical content complexity aligned to target audience expectations
• Analyzes and develops recommendations for resolution of contractual technical issues
• Maintains a macro view of L3Harris' existing and emerging technologies and capabilities
• Leads and coordinates pursuit activities such as: technical baseline reviews, Request for Information (RFI) responses, request for proposal (RFP) and Screening Information Request (SIR) responses, and white papers.

Qualifications: 

• Bachelor’s Degree in electrical or computer engineering, systems engineering, network engineering, computer science, mathematics, or physics and a minimum of 12 years of prior relevant experience. Graduate Degree and a minimum of 10 years of prior related experience. In lieu of a degree, minimum of 16 years of prior related experience.
• Experience creating and implementing network architectures (terrestrial & non-terrestrial) and complex mission solutions, inclusive of NOC/SOC systems
• Proven technical business development skills and effective oral and written communications skills
• Proven success, generating technical solutions for winning proposals
• Must and retain be able to obtain US Government Top Secret Security Clearance

Preferred Additional Skills:

• Previous experience leading and executing architecture development work using MOSA principles for DoD/government programs using Agile engineering processes
• Full program life-cycle experience with demonstrated Engineering team leadership across all disciplines
• Experience working with or for the Department of Defense (DoD), preferably USAF or USSF, in a technical role

In compliance with pay transparency requirements, the salary range for this role is $150,000 - $278,000. This is not a guarantee of compensation or salary, as final offer amount may vary based on factors including but not limited to experience and geographic location. L3Harris also offers a variety of benefits, including health and disability insurance, 401(k) match, flexible spending accounts, EAP, education assistance, parental leave, paid time off, and company-paid holidays. The specific programs and options available to an employee may vary depending on date of hire, schedule type, and the applicability of collective bargaining agreements. The application window for this requisition is anticipated to close August, 31, 2025