NODA AI develops an AI-powered orchestration platform that coordinates cross-vendor, mixed-fleet autonomous systems for defense and intelligence customers.
SYSTEMS ENGINEERING MANAGER – NODA AI Location: Austin, TX (Hybrid on-site, with approximately 20% typical travel, and up to 40% during field exercises and major integration events) Reports to: Head of Engineering (interim Systems Engineering lead) Clearance Requirement: U.S. Citizen with the ability to obtain a security clearance ABOUT NODA NODA is a veteran-owned, venture-backed technology company that is transforming how unmanned systems collaborate in complex, mission-critical environments. We are developing next-generation solutions that enable the autonomous orchestration of heterogeneous unmanned systems across air, sea, land, and space with vital applications in the defense, intelligence, and commercial sectors. NODA is a systems integration company at its core. We exist to make heterogeneous unmanned systems work together, and Systems Engineering is where that promise either holds or breaks. As NODA scales across products, partners, and deployment environments, keeping the system coherent in practice, not just on paper, is what separates a platform that works in the field from one that only works in a demo. Joining NODA means working on meaningful technology that pushes the boundaries of autonomy alongside a team that thrives on innovation, rapid iteration, and collaboration. THE ROLE We are seeking a Systems Engineering Manager to build and run the team responsible for NODA's system-level integrity as we scale. This is a high-ownership, still-technical manager role. You will personally profile systems, debug the cross-domain issues no one else can cleanly own, and build a team that catches what other teams miss, whether the gap was left deliberately or by accident. Your work will focus on the seams: the places where one unowned handoff, one gap left behind by another team, or one integration nobody traced end to end can break the orchestration. You will think vertically enough to root-cause a single hard failure all the way down, and horizontally enough to see how a fix in one domain breaks another. Success in this role requires the ability to grow the bench from where it is today into the multi-pod team NODA needs, while defining how Systems Engineering operates along the way. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES - Hire, level, and develop engineers across software, networking, RF, and hardware-adjacent debugging to build the bench NODA needs as headcount scales - Coach cross-layer debugging as a team capability, teaching engineers when to go deep in one domain, when to go wide across several, and when to delegate - Personally profile systems and root-cause the issues too ambiguous or too cross-cutting for anyone else to cleanly own - Own System Health for your scope, including performance and stability KPIs, MTTR on cross-system issues, degradation detection, and the tooling and telemetry that makes it possible - Own crash-to-root-cause analysis and the verification evidence behind release go/no-go calls - Treat security and CMMC-derived constraints as first-class design inputs, not a parallel compliance track - Catch the gaps other teams leave, deliberately or inadvertently, before they surface as integration failures or field incidents - Translate field, customer, and BD requirements into constraints your team can build against - Represent Systems Engineering at cross-team design sessions and the Architecture Review Board, and escalate system integrity and delivery risk per the Systems Engineering charter REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS - 8+ years of engineering experience, with substantial hands-on time debugging distributed, real-time, or multi-domain systems in production - 2+ years managing engineers, ideally across more than one technical domain - A real track record as an expert debugger, the person teams bring the hardest, most ambiguous cross-system issues to, regardless of layer - Able to think both ways: horizontal breadth across software, RF, networking, firmware, and hardware, and vertical depth to root-cause a single hard failure all the way down when breadth alone won't solve it - Experience owning system health, performance monitoring, or release-readiness processes - Working knowledge of networking fundamentals and real-time or low-latency middleware - Comfortable with hardware bench diagnostics (multimeter, oscilloscope) and reading firmware-level behavior well enough to know when to loop in a specialist - Working understanding of DoD security and compliance frameworks (e.g. CMMC) as they apply to system design, or demonstrated ability to ramp fast - U.S. Citizenship with the ability to obtain a security clearance PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS - Experience scaling a cross-domain engineering team 2x+ in under a year - Experience in defense, aerospace, or other mission-critical or regulated environments - Direct CMMC Level 2 (or similar) experience in a systems engineering context - Experience with embedded and edge-constrained systems (embedded Linux, RTOS, bare-metal) - Familiarity with SIL and HIL pipelines and sim-to-field validation - Experience authoring or overseeing ICDs, requirements traceability, or MBSE artifacts SKILLS & ATTRIBUTES - Systems thinker comfortable operating across software, networking, RF, firmware, and hardware boundaries - Strong debugger and root-cause analyst, with the discipline to trace hard failures across layers rather than stopping at the first plausible symptom - Effective team-builder and coach, capable of teaching cross-domain judgment as a repeatable team capability - Detail-oriented approach to system reliability, security, and release readiness in mission-critical applications - Collaborative mindset with the ability to work effectively across engineering, autonomy, and integration teams - Bias for action, with the judgment to escalate cross-team gaps with clear options rather than just problems - Mission driven, with a personal commitment to supporting