Systems Engineering covers a broad range of disciplines, sectors and technical environments.
That breadth can make recruiting an experienced Systems Engineer deceptively difficult.
A job title may appear to match, but once requirements around systems expertise, technology, sector, standards, development stage and security are added, the genuinely relevant candidate pool can become considerably smaller.
Define the systems capability you actually need
Depending on the project, a Systems Engineer might require experience across:
- requirements management
- system architecture
- integration
- interfaces
- verification and validation
- risk and trade-off analysis
- the full development lifecycle.
But does your successful candidate genuinely need deep experience across every area?
Creating a technical wish list containing every possible capability can eliminate excellent candidates unnecessarily.
Separate essential from transferable
For each requirement, consider whether it is:
Essential: Knowledge the candidate genuinely needs from day one.
Transferable: Experience that could come from an adjacent sector or environment.
Trainable: Knowledge that a strong Systems Engineer could reasonably develop.
A candidate from aerospace, defence, space, automotive, medical devices or another complex engineering environment may have highly relevant systems capability even if their sector experience isn’t identical.
Look beyond technical knowledge
Strong Systems Engineers connect the dots.
Alongside technical expertise, look for someone’s ability to understand dependencies, manage competing requirements, communicate across disciplines, anticipate integration issues and challenge assumptions.
These behaviours can be just as important as familiarity with a particular tool.
Could your best candidate have another title?
Relevant people might currently be called:
Systems Engineer, Senior Systems Engineer, Integration Engineer, Requirements Engineer, V&V Engineer or Systems Architect.
Searching too rigidly by title can therefore miss capable people.
Search by capability and experience instead.
Reaching specialist engineering talent
Many experienced engineers aren’t actively applying for jobs.
For specialist requirements, recruitment may need to include targeted market mapping, engineering networks and proactive approaches rather than relying solely on applications.
Finding the right Systems Engineer
We’ve seen this challenge first-hand.
A business at Harwell Campus needed to replace a Systems Engineer and had already been working with a non-specialist recruitment agency for several weeks without finding candidates of the right calibre.
This wasn’t simply a search for someone with Systems Engineer on their CV.
The successful candidate needed strong electronics and instrumentation experience, alongside experience of working within a multidisciplinary systems engineering environment. They also needed to understand the wider architecture of the product and how the electronic, mechanical and software elements fitted together as a complete system.
Our Engineering, Science & Space team met with the hiring team to understand the technical requirements in greater depth.
We combined that insight with our experience of recruiting similar specialist engineering roles and our knowledge of the local candidate market to conduct a targeted search.
Within a matter of days, we submitted three quality candidates, positioned at different points within the client’s salary range.
One candidate stood out because of their particularly relevant experience and was also immediately available.
We supported the client and candidate throughout the interview process, through to offer and successful acceptance.
This is a good example of why specialist Systems Engineering recruitment often needs to go beyond job titles. The more specific the intersection of technical skills becomes, the more targeted the search may need to be.
Read the full case study: Systems Engineer Secured After Specialist Search
Hard to find doesn’t mean impossible to find
Bond Williams’ Engineering, Science & Space team recruits specialist technical professionals across the South of England, Oxford and beyond.
We combine specialist market knowledge with targeted search to identify experienced engineering professionals who may not be reached through advertising alone.
Struggling to recruit Systems Engineers?
Talk to our Engineering, Science & Space recruitment team at Bond Williams
