Staff Systems Engineer

Staff Systems Engineer

Confidential client. Search led by VoltForce.

Location: San Francisco Bay Area (on-site)

Job Type: Full-time

About the Company

VoltForce is working with an early-stage materials-inspection company on the search for a Staff

Systems Engineer. Our client helps manufacturers make better, safer, and more reliable micro- and

nano-scale materials, the building blocks of critical sectors like energy storage, semiconductors,

aerospace, and power systems. As demand surges and production grows more complex and faster,

small undetected variations during manufacturing lead to waste, lower performance, higher cost, and

safety risk, leaving manufacturers with little visibility into the quality of what they produce.

The company's platform changes that. It non-destructively probes materials during production, pairing

a novel sensing approach with physics-informed machine learning to capture real-time signals that

conventional measurement techniques cannot access. Those signals give manufacturers rare visibility

into how materials behave as they are made.

The company turns that hidden data into actionable intelligence, helping manufacturers reduce

variability and increase yield and performance. The platform can run as a standalone tool or integrate

directly into production lines, it is already in early deployment with leading global manufacturers, and

the first commercial product is on the way.

Role Overview

Our client is seeking a Staff Systems Engineer to define, integrate, and validate the company's sensing

platform for deployment into advanced manufacturing environments. As an early member of the team,

you will play a key role in shaping system-level behavior and ensuring technical coherence across

hardware, software, and experimental domains, helping establish a strong and scalable technical

foundation for the company.

This role carries responsibility both for system-level technical ownership and for shaping how technical

work is documented across the organization. You will define and evolve the structure used to document

experiments, system designs, interfaces, and technical decisions, ensuring clarity, consistency, and

traceability as the company grows. These documentation practices are expected to be tightly coupled

to hands-on engineering work, including experimentation, data analysis, and system validation.

The ideal candidate applies sound systems engineering judgment to complex, cross-disciplinary

problems and is comfortable operating in areas of ambiguity. You will drive system-level trade studies,

guide experimental strategy, and resolve non-trivial integration and performance issues, while

remaining deeply engaged in day-to-day technical execution. This role offers an opportunity to operate

at a high level of technical impact in a collaborative engineering environment.

What You'll Do

• Define and own system-level architecture, integration, and validation of the company's sensing

platform• Guide system-level technical decisions through experimentation, data analysis, and

cross-disciplinary evaluation

• Lead investigation and resolution of complex system performance issues through structured

experimentation, data analysis, and root cause analysis

• Establish and evolve the structure used to document experiments, system designs, interfaces, and

technical decisions across the organization

• Ensure technical documentation is clear, consistent, and traceable, and tightly integrated with

hands-on engineering and validation activities

• Work closely with cross-functional engineering teams to guide system integration and resolve

non-trivial cross-disciplinary issues

• Incorporate customer and application feedback into system-level design evolution and validation

strategy

• Support on-site installation, validation, and system upgrade activities at customer sites as needed

• Domestic and international travel of approximately 10 to 15 percent is expected

What We're Looking For

• B.S. in Engineering or Physics with 7+ years of relevant industry experience, M.S. with 5+ years, or

Ph.D. with 3+ years of hands-on systems experience

• Experience developing automated metrology, inspection, or diagnostic systems across system

definition, integration, validation, deployment, and customer support

• Experience working in early-stage or ambiguous R&D environments, using experimentation and

data analysis to evaluate concepts and guide system-level decisions

• Proficiency with tools such as Python, MATLAB, C, LabVIEW, or similar for data analysis, modeling,

and evaluation of system performance

• Extensive hands-on experience developing, integrating, and validating prototypes, subsystems, and

complete systems

• Experience working across mechanical, electrical, software, and experimental domains to resolve

complex integration and performance issues

• Demonstrated ability to guide technical direction through experimentation, data-driven analysis, and

cross-disciplinary evaluation

• Experience establishing or evolving technical documentation practices, ensuring clarity,

consistency, and traceability of experimental results and system decisions

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, particularly in documenting complex technical work

clearly for diverse audiences

Nice to Have

• Experience with manufacturing metrology equipment and sensors used for characterization or

fabrication of advanced materials

• Experience with requirements and test management tools (e.g., Jama or similar) and data analysis

software such as JMP

• Experience with early-stage R&D and/or new product introduction (NPI) in complex technical

systems

• Exposure to high-precision, high-throughput industrial systems for material handling, metrology, or

process automation

• Prior work or research experience in key industrial markets such as batteries, semiconductors,

power generation, energy, or electronics• Familiarity with high-voltage devices and novel sensing hardware

• Experience with capital equipment designed for integration into manufacturing environments,

particularly roll-to-roll and piece-to-piece processes