ICON is looking for a Senior Systems Engineer to manage the cross functional development of our Off-Planet Robotic Systems development. The ideal candidate should have a solid foundation of systems engineering tools, processes, and methodologies. This individual is extremely proficient at communicating accurate information both out and up, a strong communicator, and has the ability to lead a highly experienced technical development team of engineers, scientists, and technicians. We need a proactive self-starter who is humble, meticulous, hardworking, collaborative and loves to solve problems. This role will report to the Technical Director, Off-Planet Systems at our Austin, TX campus.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Use NASA and NASA-like systems engineering approaches, including model based system engineering (MBSE) to manage requirements, milestones, and associated programmatic and system needs.
• Collaborate with cross-functional, multidisciplinary teams to lead, drive, and execute design, development, and test of a spaceflight hardware program. 
• Create documentation and organize technical information to serve as deliverables in government contracts, white-papers, and presentations.
• Own the execution of multiple programs and their interrelated projects in an organized, detailed manner. Projects require cross-functional coordination, communication, influence, and negotiation, including direct customer interface.
• Analyze stakeholder needs across all workstreams to identify gaps, identify risks, and define mitigation for an acceptable and timely solution.
• Efficiently communicate project status to stakeholders and leadership via presentations, dashboards, email, verbal, etc.
• Assume accountability for the entire program from start to finish while ensuring all project objectives and deliverables are met.
• Ability to lead a highly skilled multi-disciplinary team in the development of highly complex and sophisticated electro-mechanical robotic systems.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering or STEM-related field. Mechanical or Aerospace engineering background preferred.
• 8+ years of engineering product development experience with at least 3+ years experience in R&D environments developing new and cutting edge products.  
• 5+ years of experience in systems engineering for space applications with a proven track record of successfully managing hardware system development projects to completion.
• Innovative and creative problem solver with meticulous attention to detail and a stickler for time management.
• Strong curiosity tendencies and a willingness to challenge the highest technical members on the team in regards to process, approach, technical strategy, and risk.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, ability to filter and distill the relevant information to the right audience.
• Comfortable with change and ambiguity with the ability to quickly propose solutions given limited guidance.
• Strong understanding of System Engineering principles in regards to requirements capture, risk management, system block diagrams, and work breakdown structures.
• Can communicate with technical and non-technical team members effectively.
• Experience in R&D engineering, test/validation, and manufacturing.
• Adept at communicating in a collaborative team environment and seeking optimum solutions with other team members.
• Knowledge of or direct experience with MBSE

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Previous start-up experience, and/or a resourceful innovative nature with an ability to streamline or develop efficient processes.
• Ability to prepare written technical documents and to verbally present at various meetings. 
• Ability to work with a strong work ethic and close attention to detail in a fast-paced dynamic team environment with rapidly changing roles and responsibilities.
• Knowledge of Model-Based Systems Engineering methods.
• Experience with the design and development of robotic systems.
• Experience in Aerospace, preferably with spaceflight hardware development.
• Experience in Additive manufacturing technologies.
• Experience in managing large-scale and dynamic engineering projects.
• M.S. in Systems Engineering or certificates of education in Systems Engineering practices.
• Demonstrated ability to grasp new technical concepts quickly and to lead operations and technical teams.
• Ability to prioritize and stay cool in a dynamic start-up environment.
• A hunger for learning and personal growth.

ICON is looking for a pragmatic builder who has made the leap from traditional software engineering into the emerging world of agentic AI development to join our Government Technology team. As an AI Software Engineer at ICON, you will be responsible for designing and shipping AI-powered tools, workflows, and autonomous agents that accelerate ICON's construction technology platform. This role reports to the Senior Director, Defense Technology Programs and is a full-time on-site position based on our Austin, TX campus.
 

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Design and build agentic AI systems that automate complex, multi-step workflows across ICON's software platform
• Develop LLM-powered features and products using state-of-the-art foundation models and APIs (e.g. Anthropic, OpenAI)
• Architect and implement multi-agent pipelines, tool-use systems, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations
• Build robust RAG systems including document ingestion, chunking strategies, embedding pipelines, and vector retrieval
• Collaborate with software and domain teams to identify high-leverage AI automation opportunities and translate them into shipped products
• Own the full development lifecycle of AI features: prototyping, evaluation, deployment, and iteration
• Serve as a technical resource and informal mentor on agentic AI best practices across the engineering organization
• Stay at the leading edge of the agentic AI landscape and bring emerging techniques into production

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with a strong foundation in backend or full-stack development
• Demonstrated experience building and shipping production-grade products using LLMs and agentic frameworks
• Proficiency in TypeScript and/or Python
• Deep understanding of prompt engineering, context management, and LLM reasoning patterns
• Experience with tool-use, function calling, and agent orchestration (e.g. LangChain, LlamaIndex, Claude Code, or custom implementations)
• Proficiency in the design and execution of structured evals to measure and improve AI system performance
• Strong communication skills and comfort working cross-functionally with both technical teams and non-technical stakeholders
• Experience working in or alongside government, defense, or regulated environments
• Strong experience working with code generation agents (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, Devin-style systems)

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol) server development and integration
• Familiarity with vector databases (e.g. pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate)
• Experience with fine-tuning, RLHF, or model evaluation pipelines
• Strong background in ML fundamentals: embeddings, transformers, attention mechanisms
• Exposure to structured output generation and LLM-based data extraction
• Familiarity with AWS and serverless infrastructure for AI workloads
• Interest or background in the AEC (architecture, engineering, construction) industry