Flight Research Senior Systems Engineer

Flight Research Senior Systems Engineer Job Locations US-CA-Concord ID 2026-5064 Category Systems Engineering Type Regular Full-Time Company Overview Imagine a piloted air taxi that takes off vertically, then quietly carries you and your fellow passengers over the congested city streets below, enabling you to spend more time with the people and places that matter most.

Overview The Systems Engineers will own the architecture, integration, and life-cycle success of a single or multiple avionics systems, ranging from requirements management, development, certification, and entry into service.

Joby Aviation’s flight research team is looking for a passionate Senior Systems Engineer to join our growing team. This is a position that provides the engineer a chance to interact with many of the key teams and disciplines within the company.

The Senior Systems Engineer will provide technical guidance and coordination across the Autonomy Systems. This role will own the architecture, integration, and life-cycle success of the autonomy system, ranging from requirements management, development, certification, and entry into service.

This role will be responsible for leading the development and certification of systems and sub-systems and ensuring successful design validation and verification.

The Senior Systems Engineer will work very closely with Software, Hardware and GNC teams to ensure the avionics systems meet the needs of the program.

This position requires a solid understanding of aircraft systems, system development, and industry specific certification processes. This position requires enough background knowledge and a willingness to learn to enable one to understand the complex trade-offs involved in the system design both within Avionics and across the aircraft systems as a whole.

The most important traits at Joby are a positive attitude towards the project, strong work ethic, and being able to self-manage and learn new skills.

Forward thinking and the ability to adapt quickly to a fast-paced environment are a must.

Responsibilities Systems Architecture & Requirement Ownership: Lead the definition and management of system-level requirements and traceability.

You don’t just write requirements; you define the hierarchy and validation methods using tools like Jama, Polarion, or Flow. Conduct Trade Studies: Evaluate architectures and specific component options against considerations such as functional assessment, cost, mass, reliability, and performance at the component and aircraft level.

Lead make versus buy decisions. Engage with external vendors. Safety & Reliability Leadership: Drive System Safety Assessments (SSA), Functional Hazard Assessments (FHA), and Failure Mode, Effects, and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) for complex autonomous systems.

Cross-Functional Integration: Serve as the "glue" between specialized teams (Software, Hardware, Flight Controls, and GCS) to adapt the Joby hardware and software stack to new configurations and applications.

V&V Strategy (Verification & Validation): Define the master verification plan. You determine which requirements are met through simulation, HIL (Hardware-in-the-Loop) testing, and/or light testing.

Flight Readiness Authority: Lead the Technical Readiness Reviews (TRR) and Flight Readiness Reviews (FRR). You provide the analytical "green light" that the aircraft systems are safe to transition to the flight test team.

Mentorship: Act as a lead for project specific systems engineers, reviewing their work, defining project level best practices, and standardizing engineering workflows.

Required BS in Aerospace, Systems, or Electrical Engineering (or related) 8+ years in aerospace systems engineering Systems engineering experience developing complex, safety-critical vehicles, with depth on at least one side of the V and a clear desire to grow into full-V ownership Thorough understanding of systems engineering concepts and methods, including system-level requirements definition, traceability, and validation Experience with safety and reliability analyses such as System Safety Assessments (SSA), Functional Hazard Assessments (FHA), and FMECA Proficiency with requirements management and traceability tools (e.g., Jama, Polarion, DOORS) This position must meet US export control compliance requirements, therefore a candidate must qualify as a “US Person” as defined by 22 C.F.R. § 120.15. “US Person” includes US Citizens, lawful permanent residents, refugees, or asylees.

Desired Demonstrated full-V experience developing complex, safety-critical vehicles MS/PhD in engineering Experience with autonomous system logic, Command & Control (C2) link reliability, and GCS integration for Group 3-5 UAS Experience with digital flight control systems Experience with aircraft certification development and test processes (ARP4754, DO-178C, DO-254, DO-160) MBSE experience and tool proficiency (e.g., Cameo/MagicDraw, Capella, Rhapsody) Demonstrated success in clean-sheet aerospace development Experience leading Technical Readiness Reviews (TRR) and Flight Readiness Reviews (FRR) Experience mentoring systems engineers and standardizing engineering workflows Additional Information Compensation at Joby is a combination of base pay and Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).

The target base pay for this position is $161,400 - $222,000/yr. The compensation package will be determined by job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

Joby Aviation is an equal opportunity employer. Options Apply for this job online Apply Share Sorry the Share function is not working properly at this moment.