Sr. Staff Systems Architect

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman · Aerospace · Rolling Meadows, IL +1 · Systems/Architecture/Test

This role is for a Sr. Staff Systems Architect at Northrop Grumman, focusing on developing and integrating advanced Radio Frequency Electronic Warfare (RFEW) systems. The position involves translating customer needs into system requirements, designing hardware and software specifications, and ensuring systems meet performance criteria through rigorous testing. While the role involves advanced technical principles and innovation, its core focus is on systems engineering and integration within the defense sector, rather than direct AI/ML model development.

What you'd actually do

  1. You will work in a dynamic and innovative environment and work closely with cross-functional teams to create solutions to meet the needs of our customers and provide a competitive edge in the market.
  2. As an Architect on our team, you are expected to apply advanced technical principles, theories, and concepts to unusually complex technical problems and provide innovative solutions.
  3. Your expertise in RF system design and analysis, digital signal processing, and system modeling and simulation allows you to turn customer wants and needs into rapid proof of concept solutions.
  4. You can take a high-level customer objective and, through a logical and systematic process, turn it into product requirements and total system solutions that acknowledge technical, schedule, and cost constraints.
  5. This will be done through functional analysis, timeline analysis, detailed trade studies, and requirements allocation to create hardware and software specifications.

Skills

Required

  • Bachelor’s Degree and 14 years of experience in relevant engineering or sciences field or MS Degree and 12 years of experience in relevant engineering or sciences field or PhD and 10 years of experience in relevant engineering or sciences field
  • Experience in writing technical volumes in response to customer proposals
  • Expertise in digital signal processing algorithms used to build state-of-the-art high sensitivity, wideband, real-time processing digital receivers
  • Experience performing optimum system function allocation to hardware and software requirements
  • Prior experience communicating directly with customers to extract and convert their needs into testable system requirements
  • Experience with antenna modeling and RF chain analysis
  • Demonstrated success in developing test plans that prove the system satisfies requirements and the ability to quickly capture and process data in tools like MATLAB and Python for debugging and specification verification
  • Excellent written and oral communication skills, and a strong ability to work in an integrated product team environment
  • U.S. citizenship
  • Must have a current active Secret security clearance with the ability to obtain and maintain SAP.

Nice to have

  • Prior experience designing hardware, firmware, and software to best allocate functionality to each subsystem
  • Ability to monitor hardware and software design teams with critical insight to help steer the team to a successful solution
  • RFEW experience, RF threat scenario analysis
  • Experience architecting and developing Electronic Warfare RF systems with real-time digital signal processing
  • Experience working low TRL Department of Defense contracts
  • Active Top Secret security clearance

What the JD emphasized

  • Secret
  • Secret security clearance
  • SAP
  • Secret security clearance with the ability to obtain and maintain SAP