Requirements Engineer

About the Role

Draper is an independent, nonprofit research and development company focused on national challenges, delivering solutions in military defense, space exploration, and biomedical engineering. The Digital Retrieval, Engineering, Architecture, and Management (DREAM) Group is seeking an MTS 1 Requirements Engineer to support the definition, analysis, and documentation of system-level requirements for multi-domain national security programs.

Key Responsibilities

• Requirements Engineering
• Assist in gathering and documenting functional and non-functional requirements from stakeholders.
• Translate high-level mission objectives into clear, verifiable task-level requirements.
• Contribute to requirement traceability matrices under senior guidance.
• Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) Support
• Gain hands-on experience with SysML tools (e.g., MagicDraw) to create simple requirement models.
• Participate in trade space exploration (TSE) activities to evaluate alternatives.
• Technical Design & Implementation
• Support development of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) components and cross-domain data workflows.
• Write basic Python scripts for requirement analysis or data automation.
• Process & Quality Adherence
• Follow Draper’s QMS and established best practice guidelines; suggest improvements when appropriate.
• Team Collaboration & Communication
• Work closely with lead engineers, cross-functional teammates (systems, ML, data science), and external partners.
• Produce concise technical notes, meeting minutes, and status updates.
• Professional Development
• Attend internal training, webinars, and conferences to broaden technical skill set.
• Participate in requirements assessments.
• Assist in strategic technical planning, project management, performance engineering, risk management, and interface design.
• Conduct requirements engineering, scheduling, reliability, development, evaluation, maintainability, and analysis for training.
• Support the analyses and allocation of requirements.
• Assist in the capture and translation of mission and customer requirements/needs into systems/capability requirements and solutions.
• Assist in the assessment effort in conducting both formal and informal evaluations and analysis.
• Analyze assessment results and make improvement/change recommendations.
• Ensure assessment results and recommendations can be incorporated into requirements documentation.
• Independently execute system engineering lifecycle assignments under the oversight of program leadership.
• Provide content for technical reports and presentations with appropriate guidance.
• Adapt appropriately to changes in program priorities and requirements.
• Identify challenges associated with assigned work and communicate them to project leadership.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Systems engineering process
• Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) and/or digital engineering (DE) tools/methods
• SysML
• DOORs
• Python
• MagicDraw
• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• Other tools/languages may be required (e.g., modeling/simulation, SysML, STPA)
• Knowledge areas may include GN&C, avionics architectures, fault tolerance, cyber/security, comms/encryption.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, physics, mathematics, or related field.
• Master's degree preferred.
• Highly-organized, capable of approaching problems with a system-level perspective.
• Strong oral and written communication skills.
• Applies basic technical knowledge to well-defined tasks and actively learns new tools or domains.
• Follows Draper’s established processes and quality standards.
• Pursues formal and informal learning to deepen technical expertise.
• Understands task-level requirements, independently solves scoped problems, and conducts basic research when needed.
• Seeks help and leverages available resources; collaborates across teams.
• Familiar with Draper’s strategy, shows interest in customer missions, and contributes to proposals when asked.
• Identifies and communicates task-level inefficiencies to leadership.
• Executes assignments on schedule, reports issues promptly, and holds self-accountable as an active team member.
• Maintains a respectful work environment and receives constructive feedback positively.