System Owner

Overview

Role: System Owner

Location: Shoreham-by-Sea

Role ID: 2026-3391

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world.

Ricardo, member of WSP, is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

Key Responsibilities

The System Owner will lead the design, development and delivery of assigned systems and sub-systems, ensuring compliance with technical, safety, regulatory, and certification requirements. This role requires a technically versatile engineer capable of coordinating cross-functional engineering teams. They are likely to have technical expertise in one or more of the engineering disciplines and also possess broader systems engineering and complex system delivery experience.

Technical Leadership

• Act as the system / sub-system lead for assigned projects, ensuring technical integrity and compliance.
• Interpret and apply technical, safety, regulatory, and certification requirements across the system lifecycle.
• Support requirements decomposition and validation to ensure complete traceability from customer needs to system-level deliverables.

Project Execution

• Manage and coordinate a cross functional team of engineers through the full product development lifecycle of assigned system or sub-system.
• Manage and coordinate suppliers and external partners who are contributing to the development.
• Lead the definition and execution of Design Verification Plans (DVPs), ensuring robust coverage of system requirements.
• Develop and maintain detailed test plans, procedures, and acceptance criteria.
• Coordinate execution of validation activities, including lab and field testing.
• Track progress of DVP execution, managing risks, issues, and corrective actions.

Quality & Compliance

• Ensure that all engineering deliverables meet safety, quality, and regulatory standards.
• Manage certification evidence and ensure compliance documentation is complete and auditable.
• Support hazard analysis, FMEA, and safety case development to demonstrate compliance.
• Manage and coordinate the change management of design aspects within your assigned system or sub-system

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Coordinate with other system and sub-system teams including design, validation, manufacturing, and suppliers to ensure:
• The overall system performance is optimized.
• Requirements are met.
• Change impact is understood and managed across all teams.
• Represent your system or sub-system in technical reviews, audits, and program updates.
• Collaborate with quality and safety teams to ensure alignment of engineering activities with compliance needs.

Problem Solving & Continuous Improvement

• Identify and resolve issues during design validation and test execution.
• Apply structured problem-solving methods (DOE, 8D, root cause analysis) to ensure robust corrective actions.
• Promote continuous improvement in system design, development and delivery processes.

Documentation & Reporting

• Develop and maintain documentation for your assigned system or sub-system, including requirements, DVPs, and certification evidence.
• Prepare reports and presentations summarizing risks and issues, validation status, and compliance outcomes.
• Communicate results and recommendations clearly to stakeholders and leadership.

Key Competencies and Experience

Technical Expertise

• Complex system design, development and delivery
• Deep experience in at least one of the technical engineering disciplines such as mechanical design, controls, calibration, analysis
• Systems Engineering: Proven ability to manage requirements, interfaces, and validation at the system level.
• Safety & Certification: Strong understanding of regulatory frameworks, standards, and certification processes.
• Test Planning: Hands-on experience writing and executing test plans and procedures.
• DVP Execution: Skilled in planning, managing, and tracking DVP activities.
• Problem Solving: Proficiency in structured problem-solving methods (e.g., DOE, 8D, root cause analysis).

Project Leadership

• Cross functional team leadership
• Validation Coordination: Experience leading cross-functional validation activities and managing test schedules.
• Risk & Issue Management: Ability to identify, assess, and mitigate risks proactively.
• Compliance Oversight: Competence in ensuring adherence to safety and regulatory standards.

Communication & Collaboration

• Clear communicator with ability to translate technical and regulatory requirements into actionable plans.
• Strong collaborator, aligning engineering, quality, and certification stakeholders.
• Customer-oriented, ensuring deliverables meet safety, quality, and compliance expectations.

Experience Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in systems, mechanical, electrical, or aerospace engineering; Master’s degree preferred.
• Substantive experience comprised of a mix of engineering discipline and systems engineering, safety, or validation roles.
• Demonstrated experience developing and executing DVPs.
• Proven track record managing safety and certification deliverables in regulated industries.

Working here

You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place.

We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on. Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable.

Work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that is working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential.

Benefits

We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health.

Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and to ensure an inclusive culture, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Next steps

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.

Ricardo is a Disability confident employer please advise the recruitment team via [email protected] if you require any adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process.

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