Senior Systems Engineer - Configuration and Change Management Verified today
About Rocket Lab
Rocket Lab is the end-to-end space company building rockets, spacecraft, and critical subsystems that keep the world connected, protected, expand humanity's reach to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
The Role: Neutron Program
As Senior Systems Engineer for Configuration and Change Management, you will drive the Engineering Change Management (ECM) process and coordinate cross-functional teams across Systems Engineering, Design, Manufacturing, Quality, and Supply Chain. You'll bridge complex vehicle architecture and execution, ensuring interfaces are clear, changes are controlled, and configuration data is complete.
What You'll Do
- Drive the Engineering Change Management (ECM) process by collaborating closely with Systems Engineering, Design, Manufacturing, Quality, and Supply Chain teams to ensure modifications are implemented swiftly and without faults.
- Identify and verify system-level impacts of changes, ensuring that the overall integrated launch vehicle will be improved through the implementation of proposed changes.
- Execute against the project's configuration management plan while actively identifying opportunities to mature baseline control.
- Deliver rigorous configuration validation, roughly 20% of your time: confirming fit, form, function (f/f/f), ensuring EBOM-to-MBOM integrity, and managing end-of-life obsolescence procedures alongside Supply Chain.
- Drive continuous improvement and automation of data integrity checks across tools to catch missing components, mismatched revision tables, and broken ERP syncs before they impact production.
- Act as a power user of Teamcenter, Jira, and Infor LN, tracking progress and ensuring data flows smoothly between design, manufacturing, and enterprise resource planning.
- Define and uphold high-quality engineering processes.
Your Qualifications
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering or equivalent experience.
- 5 or more years of industry experience applied to a relevant technical field (Mechanical structures, Fluid Systems, Mechanisms, Propulsion, Avionics, Software).
- Proven track record of operating with autonomy, taking ownership of outcomes, and delivering to tight deadlines.
- Passion for process efficiency and curiosity to investigate and verify how systems work and that proposed changes meet stated objectives.
- Strong interpersonal and communication skills with the ability to influence and coordinate multidisciplinary engineering teams without line report authority.
- Attention to detail with the patience and discipline to manage critical configuration data.
- Experience with PLM/PDM systems, preferably Teamcenter, and workflow management software (Jira).
Nice to Have
- Project Management experience such as tracking schedules, managing manufacturing effectivity, and driving engineering deliverables to completion.
- Familiarity or practical experience applying EIA-649 principles within an aerospace, defence, or high-reliability engineering environment.
- Experience with Infor LN or data visualisation tools like Power BI to track configuration metrics and status reporting.
- Baseline capability to write Python scripts or utilise Teamcenter/Jira APIs to automate repetitive data validation tasks.
Location
Auckland, New Zealand.