Staff Engineer, Systems Design – Flow Cytometry

Work Schedule

Environmental Conditions

Job Description

Description

Thermo Fisher Scientific is seeking a highly motivated and experienced Staff Engineer, Systems Design to support our Flow Cytometry platform. This role focuses on system-level design, translating stakeholder and product needs into a coherent system solution across microfluidics, acoustic, optical, and other system domains.

The successful candidate will develop and maintain system design intent through requirements, functional architecture, physical architecture allocation, interfaces, performance definition, technical risk management, and engineering analysis. The role also includes hands-on testing to support feasibility, concept evaluation, troubleshooting, and sustaining engineering. The Systems Engineer will work closely with a Systems Integrator, who is responsible for system integration execution. Systems integration experience is beneficial but not essential; candidates demonstrating strong systems thinking, design capability, structured problem solving, and a willingness to develop integration-planning knowledge are encouraged to apply.

Responsibilities

• Translate stakeholder and product needs into clear, feasible, testable, and traceable product and subsystem requirements; manage technical tradeoffs and change impacts.

• Define and maintain system architecture and design intent, including system boundaries, workflows, use cases, theory of operation, operating modes, and performance expectations.

• Perform functional analysis and decomposition, translating functional architecture into physical subsystem allocations and defining cross-subsystem interfaces, dependencies, and critical performance characteristics.

• Evaluate system concepts and architecture alternatives through trade studies, feasibility studies, engineering analysis, and proof-of-concept testing.

• Maintain the technical risk register and drive risk-retirement activities using analysis, design changes, testing, and engineering evidence.

• Partner with the Systems Integrator to define integration strategy, interface expectations, technical dependencies, and readiness criteria, while providing system design intent and technical direction.

• Plan and perform hands-on engineering testing for concept evaluation, design characterization, requirements maturation, troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, and sustaining changes.

• Analyze engineering data using appropriate statistical and quantitative methods and translate results into clear technical conclusions and design recommendations.

• Lead cross-functional technical discussions and assess lifecycle changes for impact to requirements, architecture, interfaces, performance, risk, testability, and design intent.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Bioengineering, Biomedical, Mechanical, Optical, Electrical, Electronic Engineering, or a related engineering/scientific discipline.

• Typically 5+ years of design, systems, or test engineering experience in new product development; life sciences or analytical instrumentation experience preferred.

• Demonstrated understanding of systems engineering and system design, including requirements development, functional analysis, architecture, interface definition, design tradeoffs, and technical risk management.

• Strong systems thinking and analytical problem-solving skills, with the ability to translate functional intent into physical system design and understand cross-subsystem interactions.

• Strong hands-on engineering capability, including experimental design, troubleshooting, test-method development, data analysis, mathematics, and statistics.

• Strong technical communication, stakeholder-management, and collaboration skills across multidisciplinary teams.

• Knowledge of requirements traceability, test methodology, design controls/QMS, and regulated product-development practices is preferred.

• Experience with the Attune platform or flow cytometry instrumentation, particularly microfluidics, acoustic, and/or optical subsystems, is a strong plus.