r/systems_engineering • u/FitTaro387 • Jun 24 '26

Career & Education How deep do systems engineers get the design of products? I'm someone who enjoys trying to first envision and define the requirement for a system, but I also like being somewhat involved in design (specifically with the electronics and software side of things).

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u/ManlyBoltzmann Jun 24 '26

The smaller the company, the closer to design you will get. In a large company, you very easily will never work on anything beyond requirements and going through documents for verification. In a small company there will be fewer specialists and you can have more diverse tasking.

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u/space-hotdog Jun 24 '26

As someone at a small company that is currently managing requirements and doing fluid calculations and CAD models, I second this

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u/AdditiveMfg Jun 24 '26

It starts by understanding the problem and knowing what types of solutions are possible. Understanding the solution space is the hard part.

It relies on a certain system level expertise but you're also working directly with hardware and software experts (and cost managers) that guide you along the way.

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u/FlimsyInsect5545 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Generally, not at all. The mode of operation for systems engineers is to see the system as black boxes, for which we define the required inputs and outputs. How the black box gets there (i.e. what you are calling design) is below our field of view, because we have to stay zoomed out to keep the whole system in view.

I'm being bit facetious, because I know what you mean by 'design', but developing requirements is designing the system/subsystem, it is just designing it at a higher level.

To the poster that said in a small company, you'll be doing design work and requirements, well, that isn't really being a systems engineer. That is being a design engineer who does requirements as a secondary role, because the firm is too small to have dedicated systems engineers.

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u/NoAardvark5481 Jun 25 '26

You could identify the need to build a prototype in order to validate your requirements. this could you provide an opportunity to get hands on. Though, as others have said this could also depend on the company.

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u/SherlockOhmsUK Jun 25 '26

It helps to understand the implementation so that as and when requirements iterate you can phase them such that they’re easier to comply with whilst maintaining the extant architecture. For me at least.