Senior Systems Engineer

We are looking for a Senior Systems Engineer to join our systems engineering team and drive the requirements, system architecture, performance analysis, and functional safety work for AEye's lidar and its variants. You translate customer and product needs into verifiable system and subsystem requirements, define the KPIs the system is measured against and analyze performance data to confirm it meets them, contribute to the definition and documentation of the system architecture and its interfaces, and support the functional safety and cybersecurity activities that take a sensor from concept through production. Working with architecture, hardware, software, firmware, and mechanical teams, you keep requirements, design, verification, and interfaces consistent across disciplines and help the program meet its system- level targets in partnership with engineering, program management, and business development.

Key Responsibilities

• Requirements engineering: elicit, author, and maintain system requirements from customer, product, and regulatory inputs. Decompose system-level targets into clear, verifiable subsystem requirements (EE / ME / FW / SW / optics) with bidirectional traceability from stakeholder need to verification result, using a requirements management tool.
• System architecture: contribute to the definition and documentation of the lidar system architecture, taking ownership of assigned areas such as functional decomposition, hardware/software partitioning, and the interfaces between subsystems (optical, electrical, firmware, software, mechanical, thermal). Author and maintain interface control documents for those areas, keep interface definitions consistent across disciplines, and support trade studies to validate architectural decisions.
• Functional safety and cybersecurity: contribute to the functional safety lifecycle activities for the product per ISO 26262, including item definition, HARA, safety goals, functional and technical safety concepts, and safety analyses (FMEA, FMEDA, FTA, DFA). Support the cybersecurity concept and TARA per ISO/SAE 21434, and SOTIF considerations per ISO 21448, in collaboration with hardware and software teams.
• Verification criteria: define the verification method and acceptance criteria for every system and subsystem requirement, including those derived from environmental and eye-safety standards, and hand them off to the test and validation teams. Review verification evidence to close requirements and keep the traceability matrix current. Test plan authoring and test execution are owned by the test and validation teams, not this role.
• Cross-functional collaboration: act as the technical systems liaison across architecture, hardware, software, firmware, and mechanical teams, contributing to design reviews, resolving interface, integration, and performance issues at the system level, and supporting customer technical reviews and RFI/RFQ responses.
• Manufacturing transition: support the transition of prototypes through R&D validation into production, including production integration, design-for-x, and the process and documentation deliverables required by automotive quality and qualification standards.
• Performance KPIs and analysis: define the system KPIs (for example range, accuracy, precision, false alarm rate, separability) and develop physics-based performance models that link them to subsystem parameters. Analyze lab, field, and customer data against those KPIs and requirements, identify root causes of performance gaps, and feed the findings back into requirements, architecture, and trade studies.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, Physics, Applied Physics, Optics, Mechatronics, or a related field.
• 5+ years of systems engineering experience on optoelectronic or sensor products, preferably lidar or active depth sensing, in automotive, aerospace, or industrial markets.
• Strong requirements engineering skills: writing clear, verifiable requirements with verification methods and acceptance criteria, decomposing system targets into subsystem requirements, and maintaining traceability.
• Hands-on experience with at least one requirements management tool (for example DOORS, Jama, Polarion, Codebeamer).
• Experience defining and documenting system architectures and interfaces, including hardware/software partitioning and interface control documents covering electrical and data interfaces (for example Automotive Ethernet, CAN, SPI, I2C).
• Hands-on experience with at least one MBSE or architecture modeling tool (for example SysML based tools such as IBM Rhapsody, Capella, Cameo, or Enterprise Architect).
• Strong grounding in the physics of the system: lasers and device physics, optics, and signal processing, together with the optical, electrical, mechanical, and thermal aspects of system design.
• Working knowledge of structured product development and quality processes and standards (for example ISO 9001, V-Model, ASPICE, ISO 26262, AEC-Q), and the ability to contribute to functional safety work within them.
• Experience collaborating across architecture, hardware, software, firmware, and mechanical teams to drive system and subsystem specifications and resolve interface issues.
• Strong technical documentation skills: requirements, specifications, architecture descriptions, interface control documents, verification criteria, and reports.
• Experience defining performance KPIs, building performance models, and analyzing measured data to assess a system against its targets, with scripting for data analysis (Python preferred).

Preferred

• M.S. or Ph.D. in a related field.
• Experience across the full lifecycle of automotive, aerospace, or industrial sensor development and production, from concept and requirements through design, verification, qualification, and launch.
• Hands-on experience leading HARA, safety concepts, and safety analyses (FMEA, FMEDA, FTA, DFA), and familiarity with AUTOSAR and MISRA.
• Experience with automotive cybersecurity engineering per ISO/SAE 21434 and UN R155, including TARA, cybersecurity concepts, secure boot and secure communication requirements, and coordination with hardware and software security teams.
• Familiarity with SOTIF (ISO 21448) and its application to perception sensors.
• Functional safety or cybersecurity certification (for example TÜV/SGS Functional Safety Engineer, ISO/SAE 21434 practitioner) or ASPICE assessor training.
• Understanding of thermal concepts in sensor system design (power dissipation and heat paths, thermal budgets and derating, temperature limits, and thermal degradation of optical and electronic performance), including interpreting thermal simulation results and analyzing thermal test data.
• Hands-on experience evaluating and characterizing optical or electro-optical subsystems, including prototype bring-up, lab and field testing, and common failure modes.
• Experience with sensor calibration and its integration into production.
• Experience with sensor fusion, time synchronization (for example PTP / IEEE 802.1AS, gPTP), and perception applications.