Senior Systems Engineer at HRL Laboratories
Camarillo, CA
$154,500–$197,900from the description
Jul 21, 2026
Camarillo, CA
Jul 23, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A systems engineering leadership role focused on infrared sensor products for aerospace and defense applications. The position serves as the primary technical liaison with government customers, driving architecture decisions, requirements definition, and verification planning across cross-functional teams. It suits an experienced engineer with a background in IR camera systems, DoD or NASA program delivery, and a track record of transitioning technology from research into production.
Senior level · 6+ years · Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA · Bachelor's required · Secret clearance · Full-time
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
What the occupation pays Median $112,112 (middle half $73,931–$166,799). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (7)
This role is a hardware/systems engineering position focused on infrared (IR) sensor systems for aerospace and defense — it does not map cleanly to any standard computer/mathematical SOC. 15-1299 (Computer Occupations, All Other) is used as the closest available code; 15-1211 (Computer Systems Analysts) is noted as a secondary candidate given the systems architecture and requirements-traceability focus, but neither is a precise fit for a hardware-centric systems engineer role.
The clearance requirement states 'ability to obtain and maintain a US Government security clearance' without specifying a level. Secret is assumed as the minimum typical gate for DoD/aerospace work of this nature, but the actual required level is not stated in the posting.
Several skills listed (system architecture, verification and validation, requirements management, risk management, configuration management) are engineering disciplines rather than named tools or platforms. They are included here because the posting explicitly gates on them in the Required Qualifications section and they represent domain-specific technical competencies central to this role.
The posting does not name specific software tools (e.g., DOORS, MATLAB, CAD platforms) despite the technical depth of the role; no tool-level skills could be extracted beyond what is listed.
Pay range is stated as California-specific.
Ignored 5 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): system architecture, microelectronics design, requirements management, risk management, configuration management.
Requires a Secret clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Read the full posting
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