About Helsing
Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards. As democracies, we believe we have a special responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI. We take this responsibility seriously. We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists and customer-facing programme managers. We are looking for mission-driven people to join our European teams – and apply their skills to solve the most complex and impactful problems. We embrace an open and transparent culture that welcomes healthy debates on the use of technology in defence, its benefits, and its ethical implications.
As a Systems Engineer, Interceptors, you will shape the system architecture and requirements for AD-1 Inferno, Helsing's jet-powered interceptor within the Contra air defence system. Designed to counter fast drone and cruise missile threats at scale, AD-1 operates at high subsonic speeds and can loiter, re-engage and operate in swarms. You will translate stakeholder needs and the threat environment into a coherent system concept, then develop the requirements, architecture and evidence needed to support testing, certification and production. You will also make sure that safety, security and through-life considerations are built into the system from the outset.
Responsibilities
•Elicit needs from internal and external stakeholders, assess the threat environment and maintain a coherent concept of operations for the weapon system
•Develop and maintain the configured JAMA requirements baseline across the weapon system, subsystems and equipment, ensuring requirements are unambiguous, verifiable, linked and justified
•Conduct trade studies and analysis to decompose requirements and allocate performance parameters, while developing logical and functional architectures using model-based systems engineering (MBSE)
•Own interface control documents and define the verification and validation strategy, including design verification plans that set out how compliance will be demonstrated
•Coordinate certification and safety activities, including compliance matrices, proving evidence, final compliance documentation and the weapon system safety case, while capturing maintainability, testability, training, software upgradeability and growth margins
Requirements
•Translate stakeholder needs, operational concepts and threat information into clear system requirements
•Develop and maintain requirements baselines and traceability across complex systems, using tools such as JAMA
•Apply systems engineering methods, including trade studies, requirements decomposition and MBSE architecture development
•Plan verification, validation and certification activities, and compile clear evidence of compliance
•Work effectively with engineering, safety, security, proving and production teams, and communicate fluently in English
We encourage you to apply even if you don't meet all the listed qualifications; ability and impact cannot be summarised in a few bullet points.
Nice to have:
•Have contributed to a weapon system safety case or certification against defence and national standards
•Have developed or applied new systems engineering approaches to support the development and certification of complex, low-cost systems
Why join Helsing
Join Helsing and work with world-leading experts in their fields. Helsing's work is important: you'll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns. The work is unique: we operate in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital. Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. Despite being a relatively young company, Helsing has already been selected for multiple significant government contracts. Teams and individual engineers are trusted and encouraged to practise responsible autonomy and critical thinking, and to focus on outcomes, not conformity.
Benefits
•Competitive salary and VSOP options
•Relocation support: up to €2,500 and 4 weeks temporary accommodation
•Learning: €500/£450 yearly allowance
•Health & wellness: gym membership and mental health support (Nilo.health)
•Social: regularly company events and monthly social allowances
•Enhanced parental leave: 22 weeks fully paid for primary caregivers & 6 weeks for secondary caregivers
•Family support: 5 days of paid family emergency leave, 100% remote work option during pregnancy and phased return to work
These are the core benefits across all locations, there may be additional benefits in certain locations.