Staff Engineer, Avionics Integration

Job description

**About Merlin:** **Merlin (NASDAQ: MRLN)** is a publicly traded aerospace and defense company building a non-human pilot to deliver full-stack autonomy for any aircraft from takeoff to touchdown. The Merlin Pilot autonomy system powers a growing range of aircraft and mission profiles and has been proven through hundreds of autonomous flights from Merlin's global flight test facilities, including Kerikeri, New Zealand; Quonset Point, Rhode Island; and soon, Bedford, Massachusetts. Headquartered in Boston, Merlin is expanding its organization to accelerate the development and deployment of its autonomy platform, helping customers solve some of aviation's most pressing challenges, from pilot shortages to improving flight safety. Backed by some of the world's leading investors prior to its public listing, Merlin continues to advance the certification and commercialization of autonomous flight across commercial and defense aviation. **About You:** You're a seasoned avionics integration engineer who thinks in systems, not just circuits. You've spent years pulling together sensors, computers, software, and airframes into aircraft that actually fly and get certified — and you're ready to own the technical strategy for how Merlin integrates the Merlin Pilot across an entire fleet of platforms, not just a single program. You're comfortable being the person a room full of engineers looks to when an integration problem doesn't have an obvious owner, and you know how to turn ambiguity into a plan, a schedule, and a working aircraft. ### Responsibilities: - Own the avionics integration architecture across multiple aircraft platforms — defining how flight computers, sensors, actuators, communications, power, and software subsystems come together as a certifiable, flyable system. - Set integration strategy and technical standards used across the Aircraft Engineering team, including interface control documents, integration test methodology, and design review criteria. - Lead systems-level integration and verification of COTS/MOTS avionics, custom hardware, and software components across lab and aircraft installations, spanning multiple concurrent platforms. - Act as the senior technical authority in design reviews, flight test readiness reviews, and certification discussions, representing avionics integration to internal leadership, customers, and regulators. - Identify systemic integration risks across programs and drive root-cause resolution, rather than working platform-by-platform issues in isolation. - Mentor and provide technical direction to other integration engineers and installation technicians, raising the bar for integration rigor across the team, without formal people-management responsibility. - Partner with Systems Engineering, Software, Flight Test, Certification, and Maintenance to ensure integration decisions hold up end-to-end, from architecture through flight test and into sustainment. - Drive and review electrical/electronic, mechanical, and software interface definitions and installation and certification documentation package produced by the broader team. - This position may require up to 50% travel, sometimes with short notice, to domestic and international locations to support aircraft and system integration. ### Qualifications: - BS in Electrical, Aerospace, Systems, or related Engineering discipline (or equivalent experience). - 8+ years of experience integrating complex systems onto aircraft, with demonstrated ownership of integration architecture across more than one platform or program. - Deep, hands-on experience integrating and debugging systems spanning COTS/MOTS avionics modules, custom hardware, embedded software, sensors, and human-machine interfaces — not limited to any single engineering discipline. - Working knowledge of standard avionics interface protocols (e.g., Ethernet, ARINC 429, RS-232/422/485, CAN, MIL-STD-1553) and the judgment to choose and defend an interface architecture, not just implement one. - Track record of leading integration efforts through design review, lab test, and flight test, including managing cross-discipline dependencies and schedule risk. - Experience authoring or approving system schematics, interface control documents, and subsystem architecture diagrams. - Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and act as a technical reference point across a team, without necessarily holding a management title. - Outstanding organizational, analytical, and problem-solving skills, with the judgment to prioritize across competing program needs. - Excellent written, verbal, and presentation communication skills, including comfort presenting to executives, customers, and regulatory bodies. ### Nice to Have: - Direct experience with certified avionics on fixed-wing aircraft, particularly flight management systems (FMS), autopilot, or other flight control system components. - Working knowledge of environmental qualification and regulatory frameworks: RTCA DO-160, DO-178, DO-254, MIL-STD-461, and MIL-STD-810. - Experience standing up integration or systems engineering practices for a new program or platform from scratch. - Familiarity with lab test equipment (oscilloscopes, multimeters, current probes, data acquisition, bus analyzers) sufficient to guide others, even if not performing hands-on bench work daily. - Exposure to aviation/aerospace wire harness design and electro-mechanical system integration (motors, EMI/EMC), useful for evaluating others' work even if not a primary daily task. - Experience with design tools such as SolidWorks, Altium, or KiCAD.