Systems Engineer - All Levels at Allen Control Systems (Austin, TX)Systems Engineer - All Levels

Company Overview ACS (Allen Control Systems) is a defense technology company building precision robotic systems for the United States and its allies. Founded by two former U.S. Navy electrical engineers with deep experience in robotics and software, ACS brings together AI, computer vision, precision motion, and advanced hardware to solve complex defense challenges across land, air, and maritime environments. Our flagship product, Bullfrog, is an autonomous precision weapon system that transforms existing weapons into highly accurate counter-drone systems — giving warfighters a scalable, cost-effective response to one of the fastest-growing threats on the modern battlefield. Bullfrog is deployed with U.S. forces, and ACS works with organizations throughout the U.S. military and national security community. Following a $200 million Series B at a $2.2 billion valuation, ACS is rapidly expanding manufacturing, accelerating Bullfrog deployments, and developing the next generation of autonomous battlefield systems. This is an opportunity to join a proven, fast-moving team and help scale technology with direct, real-world impact on national security. ACS is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with additional operations in Alexandria, Virginia; Mountain View, California; and Huntsville, Alabama. For more information, visit allencontrolsystems.com.

About The Role: You'll join Allen Control Systems' Systems team — one team, three tracks (Systems, Systems Test, and Systems Reliability) reporting to the Director of Systems Engineering. We work cross-functionally across mechanical, electrical, software, controls, test, and operations to build ACS's autonomous weapon platforms, including Bullfrog. We are looking for a Systems Engineer to join our team and help architect, define, and mature our next-generation autonomous weapon platforms. In this role, you will turn high-level mission and product objectives into clear requirements, interfaces, verification plans, and technical decisions that guide development across hardware and software. You will work cross-functionally with design, controls, software, test, and operations teams to drive alignment, manage system-level tradeoffs, and ensure the overall system performs as intended. The ideal candidate is technically rigorous, highly collaborative, and excited to bring structure and clarity to complex, fast-moving engineering programs. This role can be filled with a SW, ME/EE (hardware), or Analysis focus — tell us which lane fits you best; strong generalists are welcome too. We're hiring across multiple experience levels, including:

• Associate Engineer
• Engineer
• Senior Engineer
• Staff Engineer
• Senior Staff Engineer

Your title and level will be determined based on your experience, skills, and the scope of responsibility appropriate for the role. What You'll Do:

• Own the full requirements management and verification process for complex autonomous systems, from requirement definition through verification closure.
• Derive system and subsystem requirements from first principles — reasoning up from mission objectives, physics, and operating constraints rather than inheriting or copying prior requirements — and express them as clear, testable statements.
• Define verification strategies, methods, and pass/fail criteria before testing begins, and ensure each requirement has an explicit path to closure.
• Drive requirement decomposition, traceability, and alignment across mechanical, electrical, software, controls, and operations teams.
• Work closely with test and design engineers to ensure verification activities produce usable evidence and defensible engineering conclusions.
• Identify gaps in requirements, verification coverage, and technical ownership early, and drive cross-functional resolution before they become program risks.
• Review test results, engineering analyses, and system behavior to determine whether requirements have been satisfied or need refinement.
• Help structure design reviews, verification reviews, and technical decision-making around clear evidence rather than informal status.
• Support system integration and issue triage by connecting observed behavior back to system requirements and expected behavior.
• Own the engineering analysis behind requirements and decisions — modeling, simulation, margin and budget analysis, and quantitative data analysis — so requirements, pass/fail thresholds, and trade-offs are grounded in numbers rather than assumption.
• Manage technical risks and conduct engineering trade studies, using analysis to weigh options and justify the chosen direction.
• Develop Operations and Maintenance manuals to enforce continuous improvement and align requirements with design processes.
• Raise the bar on technical rigor by ensuring the team knows what must be proven, how it will be proven, and what evidence counts as success.

What You'll Need:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering or a related technical field.
• We hire across levels, and experience expectations scale accordingly — from interns and new grads (relevant coursework, projects, or prior internships) through senior engineers (roughly 3+ years in systems engineering, requirements management, verification planning, or multidisciplinary product development).
• Experience deriving and writing clear, testable requirements from first principles — starting from mission needs, physics, and constraints — and defining practical verification approaches.
• Ability to perform engineering analysis (modeling, simulation, margin/budget analysis, or quantitative data analysis) to define requirements and evaluate whether they are met.
• Strong understanding of system integration across hardware and software, including the challenges of cross-functional technical ownership.
• Ability to evaluate test results, engineering analyses, and other technical evidence against requirement intent.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to align teams around clear technical expectations.
• Comfort operating in a fast-paced environment with incomplete information, changing priorities, and high ownership.
• Experience working across mechanical, electrical, software, and test teams to drive technical closure.

You'll Stand Out:

• Strong systems thinking with the ability to see where interfaces, assumptions, or missing requirements are likely to create downstream problems.
• A track record of turning ambiguous technical goals into structured requirements, verification plans, and closure criteria.
• A strong bias toward automation — building scripts or tooling to automate requirements traceability, verification tracking, data analysis, and evidence generation instead of doing it by hand.
• Comfort pushing for clarity when ownership, pass/fail criteria, or verification evidence is vague.
• Prior experience qualifying defense, aerospace, and/or safety-critical applications.
• Experience with requirements management in JAMA or DOORS.
• A bias toward technical rigor without becoming overly process-heavy.
• Good judgment about how much structure is needed to keep fast-moving engineering work aligned and accountable.

What We Offer:

• Competitive salary
• ACS Equity Package
• Health, Dental, Vision Insurance
• Paid Time Off

Allen Control Systems is an Equal Opportunity Employer, providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment. Allen Control Systems prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.