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Sr. Systems Engineer

Philadelphia, PA

In today's dynamic worksites, seamless collaboration between people and machines is essential. FORT's platform ensures safe, secure, and dynamic control that surpasses legacy systems and next-generation AI capabilities.

While autonomous machines offer significant advantages, they also introduce new safety challenges. FORT addresses these concerns by providing solutions such as the Wireless E-Stop, which allows operators to instantly stop any machine from a safe distance, enhancing safety during emergencies.

Additionally, FORT's Safe Remote Control enables operators to manage heavy machinery remotely, reducing the risk of accidents and improving visibility.

By ensuring communications integrity across any network, FORT empowers customers to protect their most valuable assets—people, data, and machines—ensuring they remain safe and secure.

As a Systems Engineer, you will join a small, focused team responsible for defining and managing system-level requirements across hardware, firmware, and cloud software for FORT's Pro Series platform. The processes are established — your focus will be execution: driving rigorous requirements definition, ensuring traceability, and collaborating cross-functionally to make sure every feature is fully specified from happy path to edge cases before development begins.

This is a hands-on role for someone who thrives in a fast-moving, iterative environment and takes pride in producing requirements that support development & test engineers, and end customers.

Responsibilities

  • Requirements Definition: Work cross-functionally with Development and Test teams to define a complete set of system-level requirements — including happy path, unhappy path, regulatory, safety, and security requirements — for platform and product features.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Engage Hardware, Firmware, Cloud Software, and Product teams to ensure requirements reflect the desired system behavior and attributes, and to identify gaps before they become problems downstream.
  • Requirements Management: Author, organize, and maintain requirements in the requirement database (Jama) and steer cross-functional review cycles.
  • Requirement-to-Test Traceability: Partner with Test Engineering to ensure every requirement maps to a test case and that coverage is complete before release. Leverage automation where possible to expedite tracing and ensure comprehensive coverage.
  • Trade Studies: Conduct trade studies to evaluate technical options and provide clear recommendations to Engineering Leadership with supporting rationale.
  • Impact Analysis: Support impact analysis for proposed changes, assessing scope across hardware, firmware, software, and safety domains, to identify any ripple effects of an engineering change.
  • Test Plan Review: Review test plans to verify alignment with requirements and flag gaps or ambiguities.
  • Regulatory & Safety Requirements: Identify and incorporate applicable regulatory, functional safety, and cybersecurity requirements into the requirements baseline.
  • Agile Execution: Operate effectively within iterative release cycles — decomposing requirements into sprint-ready work, participating in planning and review, and adapting to change without sacrificing requirements rigor.

Qualifications

Experience

  • 3–7 years of experience in systems engineering, with a focus on requirement definition for complex hardware-software systems.
  • Demonstrated ability to develop comprehensive, testable requirements — including edge cases, error handling, and failure modes — not just nominal behavior.
  • Experience working cross-functionally with development and test teams in an agile or iterative development environment.
  • Background in one or more of the following domains: embedded systems, wireless/IP communications, cloud software, user interface design, or robotics and autonomous systems.

Technical Skills

  • Proficiency with requirements management tools such as Jama or equivalent; strong understanding of traceability best practices.
  • Working knowledge of communication protocols, including IP networking and radio communications (ISM, BLE, Wi-Fi, or similar).
  • Familiarity with embedded systems and hardware-software integration.
  • Experience conducting trade studies and documenting technical decisions.
  • Preferred: knowledge of functional safety standards (IEC 61508, ISO 13849, or similar) and/or system safety (MIL-STD-882 or similar); experience supporting safety certifications or compliance efforts is a plus.

Competencies

  • Methodical, detail-oriented approach to requirements — you close loops and don't leave ambiguity on the table.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to translate technical complexity into clear, precise requirement statements.
  • Collaborative by nature — you build good working relationships with engineers and know how to facilitate productive cross-functional conversations.
  • Comfortable working in a small team where you own your domain end-to-end.

Education

  • B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field preferred.
  • Master’s degree in Systems Engineering preferred.

Work Style

  • Hybrid, with a preference for local candidates who can work from our Philadelphia office at least three days per week.

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