Lead Systems Engineer

Katalyst HealthCares and Life Sciences

$112K — $135K *
Healthcare
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 8+ years in medical device systems engineering; 3+ years in design control remediation or post-inspection response.
  • Experience managing system requirements throughout product development with traceability from user needs to verification.
  • Direct experience with FDA 483 or warning letter remediation, demonstrating personal accountability for closing issues.
  • Fluent in ISO 14971, ISO 13485 and 21 CFR 820.30; understanding of regulatory standards is essential.
  • Proficient in decomposing requirements and authoring DFMEA, Usability FMEA, and design verification protocols independently.
  • Familiar with PLM and ALM environments, particularly Windchill and Codebeamer; similar tools accepted with a quick learning curve.
  • Quality presence in meetings with the ability to justify technical decisions as a senior client's engineer.

Responsibilities

  • Own and drive closure of gap records related to requirements, risk management, and verification.
  • Determine the depth of remediation for each record, justifying decisions to the customer's systems engineering manager.
  • Repair and author product requirements, ensuring restored traceability across product hierarchies.
  • Remediate Usability FMEA and design FMEA, linking all risk controls back to the corresponding requirements.
  • Assess verification evidence and rebuild where records do not substantiate claims made.
  • Create a failure-type taxonomy to classify issues and propagate solutions across the portfolio efficiently.
  • Implement quality gates to maintain high first-pass approval rates before customer reviews, protecting project schedules.
  • Package remediation work for offshore teams; define acceptance criteria and review returned documentation thoroughly.

Benefits

  • Onsite presence required three days a week in Bothell, fostering teamwork and collaboration.
  • Engaging work directly with customer systems engineering teams provides immediate feedback and impact.
  • Opportunity to lead technical standards within a small team, boosting leadership experience and visibility.
  • Focus on substantive engineering judgment rather than mere documentation, enhancing professional development.
  • Weekly structured reporting allows for ongoing progress tracking and alignment with project goals.
Full Job Description
Job Description:
You will lead the remediation of design control records across a portfolio of released Class I and II medical devices, working onsite alongside the customer's systems engineering team. This is post-inspection remediation work. The requirements, risk and verification chain has gaps. You will find them, close them, and prove they are closed. This is not a documentation exercise. The engineering judgement is the job - deciding how deep a fix has to go and knowing when a record needs rebuilding rather than patching. You will own the technical standard for a small team, and you will be the person the customer escalates to.
Responsibilities:
  • Take ownership of assigned gap records across requirements, risk management and verification, and drive each one to a closed, approvable state.
  • Make the remediation depth call on every record - spot cleanup, targeted rework, or full reconstruction - and defend that call to the customer's systems engineering manager.
  • Repair and author requirements across the full product hierarchy, restoring upstream and downstream traceability that has been lost or never established.
  • Remediate Usability FMEA and design FMEA at product, element and part level, linking every risk control back to the requirement that implements it.
  • Assess and rebuild verification evidence where the existing record does not support the claim being made.
  • Build and own a failure-type taxonomy: classify each gap to a pattern, author the fix once, and propagate it across the portfolio rather than solving the same problem repeatedly.
  • Run a quality gate before anything reaches customer review. First-pass approval rate is the metric that protects the schedule.
  • Package work for an offshore support team, define acceptance criteria, and review everything they return before it is submitted.
  • Report weekly in one page: closed, in review, blocked, progress against plan. Same format every week.

Requirements:
  • 8+ years in medical device systems engineering, with at least 3 years in design control remediation, design assurance or post-inspection response.
  • Defined and managed system requirements throughout the product development lifecycle, ensuring complete traceability from user needs to verification and validation.
  • Worked a live FDA 483 or warning letter remediation and can describe what you personally closed.
  • Fluent in ISO 14971, ISO 13485, and 21 CFR 820.30
  • Decompose requirements, author DFMEA and Usability FMEA, and design verification protocols without supervision.
  • Worked in a PLM and an ALM environment. Windchill, Codebeamer are the toolchain here; equivalents are acceptable with a short ramp.
  • You hold your position in a room. You will be the senior Client's engineer in a customer design review, and you will be asked to justify decisions on the spot.
  • Bachelor's or Master's in biomedical, mechanical, electrical or systems engineering.
  • US work authorization and can be onsite in Bothell three days a week.

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