Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems has an opening for a Principal Systems Engineer – Nuclear Hardness & Survivability (NH&S) with a focus in Live Fire Test and Evaluation (LFT&E) to join team of qualified, diverse individuals. The position will be located in Melbourne, Florida. The Principal Systems Engineer will have a unique opportunity to support design and mitigation strategies to develop and field a survivable weapon system with operational requirements involving Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear threat environments.

General Responsibilities

The candidate will be an integral contributor throughout the Engineering & Manufacturing Design and Test phases of the program providing domain specific expertise. The candidate will perform Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Survivability Live Fire Test & Evaluation (LFT&E) analysis, assessments and reporting to determine the likelihood of personnel, system and aircraft loss resulting from operation within hostile threat environments. General job responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Evaluate equipment and system-level NH&S Design Analysis Reports (DAR) and threat-level system test plans and reports documenting compliance 

• Generate weapon system LFT&E artifacts supported by design analysis, modeling & simulation, equipment, system-level trade studies, system integration, piece-part, component, equipment, and system test artifacts

• Prepare and present LFT&E Program documentation supporting requirements compliance and weapon system performance traceability throughout design reviews leading to weapon system certification 

• Execute liaison responsibilities between the Survivability and Test & Evaluation Team supporting the LFT&E analysis, evaluation, and validation of components, equipment, subsystems, or weapon system analytical models demonstrating compliance to operationally relevant LFT&E threat environments. Working knowledge of strategic and tactical weapon system operational threat environments and resulting effects on system interactions of DoD and militarized commercial systems is crucial.

Domain specific technical skills and activities are as follows: 

• Decompose and analyze weapon system CONOPS & threat engagement scenarios 

• Liaison with Survivability Subject Matter Expert (SME) supporting LFT&E assessments

• Conduct survivability trade studies determining air vehicle and system vulnerabilities

• Correlate and calculate survivability/vulnerably assessments for personnel, equipment and weapon system modeling against relevant CONOPS nuclear, electromagnetic and Chem/Bio and Radiological threat environments

• Create Survivability and LFT&E artifacts/documenting detailing vulnerability prevention & mitigation techniques

• Develop weapon system Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTP) and ensure they are incorporated in the operational manuals

• Ensure Hardness Maintenance/Hardness Surveillance (HM/HS) procedures support production hardness assurance tests and development of source data for Technical Order publication 

• Review Acceptance Test Procedure and Qualification Test Reports 

• Review of Seller drawings, Qualification Test Plans & Procedures, Qualification Test Reports, and Qualification by Similarity Substantiating Data

• Witness Component and System-level Hardness Testing 

• Provide a customer point of contact for Specialty Engineering aircraft vulnerability 

• Develop Survivability source material/content supporting LFT&E as well as NH&S deliverables

• Ability to travel 20% is required

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor of Science Degree in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM) discipline and 5 years of Engineering experience, or 3 years engineering experience with a Master of Science Degree in a STEM discipline, or 1 year of engineering experience with a PhD in a STEM discipline. 

• Capability to define and implement system engineering models for new start programs

• Must have an active DoD Secret clearance with the ability to obtain and maintain an interim Top Secret prior to starting, within a reasonable amount of time as determined by the business.

• Must have the ability to obtain and maintain Special Access Program (SAP) clearance.

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Active DoD Top Secret Clearance

• Nuclear Command, Control & Communication weapon system survivability design & test experience 

• Exposure and familiarity with MBSE approaches and tools (Cameo, Doors, etc.), as well as  engineering software (Matcad, MatLab, COMSOL, CST, ANSYS, FEKO) as well as DoD LFT&E Modeling & Simulation techniques

• Proficiency with threat environment vulnerability assessments, and Modeling & Simulation techniques and tools

• Experience with product testing, preferably system level tests demonstrating interaction between subsystems or major elements

• Familiarity with Nuclear Weapon Environment standard, such as MIL-STD-3054 and/or DTRA-TR-14-71