Director of Systems Engineering R&D

Location: Houston, Texas, United States

Department: Research & Development

Role Objective 

• Lead ON.energy’s Systems Engineering team and the practices that translate product strategy, customer needs, grid requirements, and technology opportunities into complete, verifiable system solutions. 

• Establish practical systems engineering governance across product architecture, requirements, interfaces, technical risk, verification, qualification, and design transfer. 

• Build team capability and technical ownership for grid-scale energy storage, power conversion, UPS, and advanced power quality products from concept through field deployment. 

Team Leadership and Capability 

• Lead, coach, and develop Systems Engineers; define roles, ownership, capability gaps, hiring priorities, and workload balance across active product and customer programs. 

• Set objectives, provide feedback, support performance management, and build the technical depth required for ON.energy’s product roadmap. 

• Act as product lead engineering interface to sales, sales engineering, and project engineering 

Systems Engineering Practice and Governance 

• Define and improve the lifecycle for concept definition, requirements, architecture, interfaces, design reviews, technical risk, verification planning, configuration control, and design transfer. 

• Establish practical templates, tools, review criteria, decision records, interface documents, and evidence expectations without creating unnecessary process burden. 

Product Architecture and Technical Direction 

• Guide system architectures for grid-scale energy storage, power conversion, UPS, and advanced power quality products across performance, safety, controls, protection, thermal, mechanical, cybersecurity, serviceability, and lifecycle requirements. 

• Assign design authorities, resolve cross-disciplinary conflicts, and ensure structured trade studies covering performance, cost, schedule, manufacturability, supplier capability, reliability, and product risk. 

• Document major technical decisions, assumptions, constraints, and rationale in a way that can be reused across future programs. 

Requirements, Interfaces, and Risk 

• Ensure requirements are complete, testable, traceable, and aligned with product strategy, customer commitments, regulations, grid codes, and standards. 

• Oversee disciplined flow-down to subsystems, components, software, controls, verification, and release criteria. 

• Establish management of electrical, mechanical, thermal, controls, communications, and operational interfaces across internal teams, suppliers, customer systems, and project applications. 

• Maintain technical risk visibility across the product portfolio and drive early retirement through modeling, prototyping, supplier testing, design reviews, and root-cause investigations. 

Verification, Qualification, and Product Execution 

• Direct system-level verification and validation linking requirements to analysis, simulation, inspection, hardware testing, and field evidence. 

• Define acceptance criteria, evidence plans, review readiness, and qualification strategy early in the product lifecycle. 

• Coordinate qualification across laboratory, factory, national lab, supplier, and field environments. 

• Align product intent, technical scope, schedules, and release criteria with Product Management, Program Management, discipline engineering, Supply Chain, Operations, Deployment, and Service. 

• Set expectations for supplier technical deliverables, reviews, interface compliance, and qualification evidence; ensure validated designs transition effectively into manufacturing, commissioning, and service. 

Stakeholder Communication 

• Present architecture, decisions, risk, requirements maturity, verification status, interface dependencies, and review readiness clearly to leadership and cross-functional stakeholders. 

• Coordinate communications and engineering efforts across integrated product teams of disciplinary subject matter experts and product managers who report into other functional leaders 

• Represent Systems Engineering in strategic customer, partner, supplier, standards, and technical due diligence discussions. 

Experience and Requirements 

• B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a closely related field; M.S. or Ph.D. preferred. 

• 12+ years in complex power, energy, industrial, or electromechanical product development, including significant systems engineering responsibility and leadership of technical teams. 

• Demonstrated success managing and developing Systems Engineers or multidisciplinary teams, including resource planning, hiring, performance management, and capability development. 

• Proven success leading products through concept, requirements, architecture, detailed development, qualification, production release, and field deployment. 

• Direct experience with grid-scale BESS, power conversion systems, uninterruptible power supplies, or adjacent power and energy hardware is strongly preferred. 

• Strong command of requirements engineering, architecture, interface control, trade studies, technical risk, verification and validation, configuration management, and design review governance. 

• Working knowledge of relevant grid, safety, product, and reliability standards, with the ability to resolve complex issues and communicate clearly with engineers, executives, suppliers, and customers. 

Work Environment 

This role is based in Denver, Colorado or Houston, Texas, or remote with regular travel between ON.energy offices, vendor facilities, national lab partners, and customer project sites to support product development, qualification, and deployment.