Overview

Draper is an independent, nonprofit research and development company headquartered in Cambridge, MA. The 2,000 employees of Draper tackle important national challenges with a promise of delivering successful and usable solutions. From military defense and space exploration to biomedical engineering, lives often depend on the solutions we provide. Our multidisciplinary teams of engineers and scientists work in a collaborative environment that inspires the cross-fertilization of ideas necessary for true innovation. For more information about Draper, visit www.draper.com.

Our work is very important to us, but so is our life outside of work. Draper supports many programs to improve work-life balance including workplace flexibility, employee clubs ranging from photography to yoga, health and finance workshops, off site social events and discounts to local museums and cultural activities. If this specific job opportunity and the chance to work at a nationally renowned R&D innovation company appeals to you, apply now www.draper.com/careers.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Draper is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer. We understand the value of diversity and its impact on a high-performance culture. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, or genetic information.

Draper is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. To request reasonable accommodation, please contact hr@draper.com.

Responsibilities

The Hypersonic and Advanced Weapons group at Draper is seeking a Principal Weapon System Architect to work within multi-disciplinary teams to conceptualize and prototype advanced weapon/guidance systems that are of strategic importance to the nation. This role will be of high interest to applicants that desire to build/leverage expertise in guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) technologies to enable/shape new mission-level capability solutions for the warfighter. Relevant mission domains may include: global strike and/or strategic deterrent systems, hypersonic weapons, missile defense systems, space systems, precision guided munitions, and autonomous air/sea vehicles.

A successful candidate for this position will be highly motivated to: (a) support the delivery of technology solutions that are of strategic importance to the nation in the context of evolving threats from peer and near-peer competitors; (b) build deeper expertise in both the core mission domain(s) and underlying GNC technology, and (c) support business development and shape new warfighter capabilities. Working in a dynamic team environment developing state-of-the-art weapon/GN&C systems will provide exposure to a wide range of advanced technologies as well as afford opportunities for increased leadership/impact on the development of new war-fighter capability.

Duties and responsibilities may include:

• Identification of customer mission needs and development of use cases;
• Analysis of mission use cases to derive subsystem requirements;
• Conceptualization of novel GNC hardware, software, and system solutions;
• Trade-space analysis for complex system-of-systems;
• Architecture/interface definition and requirements development;
• Establish/manage digital representations of system technical baselines;
• Development of systems engineering, design, and analysis artifacts/documentation;
• Detailed functional and performance modeling of component technologies;
• Verify complex modeling in 6-degree-of-freedom simulations (6-DOF);
• Support integrated hardware/software prototype development;
• Development of test strategies/plans for prototype technology;
• Analysis of performance and test data;
• Development of research proposals and plans;
• Briefing of results to leadership and government sponsors;
• Task/project planning and leadership;
• Supervision of junior engineers.

Qualifications

Applicants must have the following key qualifications:

• An M.S. degree or higher in engineering or physics;
• 15 years of professional experience in development of defense/space systems;
• Experience leading tasks/teams of 10 or more engineers;
• Experience leading successful proposals to US department of defense (DOD);
• Knowledge of guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) technology;
• Demonstrated ability to formulate a research program plan and write proposals;
• Ability for occasional travel;
• Strong presentation skills and the ability to articulate complex technical ideas.

Any of the following additional qualifications are highly desirable:

• Deep expertise with respect to either/both GNC hardware or software technology;
• Domain experience with respect to strategic weapon systems, as defined above;
• Experience with inertial navigation system error modeling (aided/unaided);
• Knowledge of optimal state estimation, including Kalman filtering and smoothing;
• Knowledge of AI/ML theory and techniques in application to real-world analyses;
• Knowledge of multi-objective optimization techniques.

Applicants selected will be subject to a government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information.

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