V&V Systems Engineer

At Hypersonica, we’re redefining what’s possible in European defence technology. We exist to deliver speed, resilience, and technological independence at a pace that sets a new standard. We are a small, elite team working on problems that matter, and solving them fast. By joining Hypersonica, you’re not stepping into a predefined role. You’re joining a talent dense environment where every individual shapes the direction of the company. Our philosophy is to hire a small number of exceptional people with broad, deep technical capability, strong judgement, and the ability to operate autonomously. We hire for talent, not rigid boxes. This role represents a business need, but the way it evolves will be shaped by the individual. If you’ve achieved what others said was impossible, or you bring a unique combination of skills that doesn’t fit a traditional mould, we want to hear from you. The work you do here directly contributes to Europe’s technological independence.

What you’ll do

• Own the system architecture and system model for Hypersonica’s high-speed flight vehicles, ensuring mission intent, vehicle dynamics, avionics, and GNC form a coherent, verifiable whole.

• Lead aerospace systems architecture design, taking responsibility for how the vehicle is defined across disciplines from early concept through Preliminary Design Review (PDR) and beyond.

• Build and maintain the authoritative system requirements model, decomposing mission-level objectives into clear, testable system and sub-system requirements.

• Define and own the end-to-end system V-model, including requirements validation, verification strategy, and clear readiness gates for Kick-off and PDR.

• Apply model-based systems engineering (MBSE) as a practical engineering tool, not a documentation exercise, ensuring traceability between requirements, models, analyses, and tests.

• Develop and deliver a 6-DoF Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) model to PDR standard, in close collaboration with flight physics and avionics engineers.

• Apply closed-loop control theory in the context of high-speed flight and military guidance, ensuring controllability, stability, and performance are understood at the system level.

• Integrate vehicle dynamics, control laws, sensors, and actuators into a coherent closed-loop system representation.

• Identify system-level risks early particularly around requirements gaps, controllability, observability, and verification - and drive mitigations decisively.

• Act as a technical authority across disciplines, keeping architectural decisions coherent as designs evolve at pace., * A mission driven environment with the opportunity to work on one of Europe’s most consequential defence challenges, with direct impact on sovereign capability and security.

• Daily collaboration with top experts across engineering, operations, and defence, with real opportunity to learn from the best, contribute, and grow.

• High ownership and autonomy; no time tracking, no micromanagement, just clear objectives and accountability for outcomes.

• A fast paced environment where good ideas are implemented quickly, and feedback from test and flight drives real decisions.

• A culture that values clarity, integrity, and excellence, and supports people who take initiative and push boundaries responsibly.

• An experienced Systems Engineer with a strong track record in system architecture, requirements decomposition, and delivery in safety- or mission-critical environments.

• Deeply fluent in model-based systems engineering, with practical experience owning requirements models and using MBSE to drive real engineering decisions.

• Strong grounding in closed-loop control theory, applied to high-speed flight, guidance, and defence or military systems.

• Comfortable developing and working with 6-DoF flight and GNC models, and understanding their implications at vehicle level.

• Experienced taking systems through early design gates (Kick-off, PDR), not just theoretical or paper studies.

• Someone who thinks in system behaviours, interfaces, and failure modes, not isolated components.

• Confident operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments where decisions must be made with incomplete data.

• Technically credible across disciplines, able to challenge assumptions and close decisions without consensus theatre.

• Motivated by working on systems where performance, robustness, and national-level impact genuinely matter.

Security and Elgibility Requirement

Due to the nature of the work with the UK MOD, applicants must be a British Citizen (or Dual UK national with British citizenship) and eligible for UK Security Clearance (SC) and, where required, Developed Vetting (DV)

• Competitive compensation and real share options aligned to responsibility and impact, not tenure or hierarchy.