What are the responsibilities and job description for the Systems Engineer position at AIT Global, Inc.?
Job Title: Systems Engineer
Location: Fridley, MN
Location: Fridley, MN
Key Responsibilities:
- Facilitate and lead structured technical design discussions, driving clear decisions, trade-offs, and actionable outcomes across embedded control system features
- Ensure alignment of designs with system architecture principles, including both RTOS-based platforms and Embedded Linux systems
- Drive integration across hardware, software, firmware, and communication layers, ensuring coherent system-level behavior and interface alignment
- Define and maintain system interfaces and communication models, including data flow, timing behavior, and interactions across controllers, devices, and networked components
- Support design and integration of features interacting with power system controls, including generator, switchgear, and distributed energy system applications
- Facilitate alignment on communication architectures, including Ethernet-based systems and industrial communication frameworks such as OPC UA, DDS, or similar technologies
- Develop and maintain architecture artifacts including system diagrams, network representations, interface definitions, and decision logs, ensuring traceability across requirements, design, and validation
- Identify and resolve system-level ambiguities, architectural gaps, and integration risks, including failure modes, communication behaviors, and edge-case conditions
- Engage with software and platform teams to understand embedded system behavior, including interactions between application software, middleware, operating system, and hardware
- Support system-level debugging and integration analysis, including investigation of issues spanning embedded software, operating system behavior, networking, and hardware interactions
- Partner with validation teams to define system-level test strategies, including networked test environments, hardware-in-the-loop systems, and integration lab testing
- Support development of test setups and validation environments to evaluate reliability, startup behavior, communication stability, and recovery scenarios
- Ensure consistency between design intent, configuration artifacts, and validation outcomes, enabling traceable and repeatable system verification
- Support use of model-based, data-driven, or configuration-driven workflows, ensuring alignment between system definition and deployed behavior
- Act as a cross-functional integration leader, coordinating across global teams, stakeholders, and subject-matter experts to drive system readiness and resolve technical issues
- Track and drive closure of cross-team dependencies, design actions, and integration issues to ensure program progress
- Contribute to continuous improvement of engineering processes, documentation standards, validation infrastructure, and design governance practices
Required Skills and Experience:
- Strong understanding of embedded systems and software architecture, including software layering (drivers, middleware, application), system services, and hardware interaction
- Working experience with Embedded Linux systems, including familiarity with system architecture, services, processes, networking, and runtime behavior in embedded environments
- Practical experience with embedded software or firmware development environments, including build systems, deployment workflows, and basic debugging approaches
- Understanding of RTOS-based systems and differences between RTOS and Linux-based control architectures
- Experience with embedded communications and networking, including Ethernet-based systems and distributed communication frameworks such as OPC UA, DDS, or similar
- Ability to analyze and troubleshoot system-level issues spanning software, operating system, networking, and hardware domains
- Familiarity with real-time and deterministic system constraints, including timing behavior, scheduling, communication latency, and system recovery
- Experience with system integration and validation, including development of test plans, test setups, and evaluation of integrated system behavior
- Familiarity with integration lab environments, networked test systems, or hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing approaches
- Understanding of configuration-driven or model-based development approaches and how they translate into deployed system behavior
- Demonstrated systems thinking capability, including evaluation of end-to-end system behavior, subsystem dependencies, and design trade-offs
- Proven ability to lead technical discussions and influence decisions without formal authority across architecture, software, controls, and validation teams
- Strong documentation skills, including development of architecture diagrams, interface definitions, validation documentation, and decision records
- Demonstrated ability to work across multiple technical domains simultaneously and integrate inputs into cohesive system-level outcomes
- Strong ownership mindset with the ability to drive ambiguous, cross-functional work to closure
Preferred Skills:
- Strong understanding of power system controls concepts, including generator systems, switchgear interactions, and system-level control behavior
- Experience working directly on Embedded Linux-based control platforms such as Yocto or similar environments
- Experience in power generation, microgrid, or mission-critical power system applications
- Familiarity with distributed control architectures and networked system design
- Experience with model-based design tools such as Simulink or equivalent
- Experience with embedded software debugging tools, logging frameworks, or diagnostics in Linux or RTOS environments
- Experience with validation tools, data logging systems, or reliability tracking frameworks
- Experience supporting or leading system integration efforts or product demonstrations
- Familiarity with engineering tools and workflows such as Jira, Confluence, PGBST, or similar platforms