System Engineer in London

Location: UK, hybrid, with travel to the CAA and project sites.

Neuron is building the machine internet. Sensors, drones, robots and software are becoming autonomous, but they can't yet find, trust or work with each other across organisations. Neuron is the coordination layer that changes that: the DNS and routing for agentic physical systems. Each organisation runs its own Neuron console and registers its systems as agents with a verifiable identity. Other organisations can then discover those agents, trust them and work with them through shared protocols, across organisational and national boundaries, without anyone giving up control of their systems or data. Everything on the network is ready to work with AI agents.

It is already live and paid for. There are 470+ agents on our network, and we have won £4.3M in grants and sales since 2019, £1.7M of it since June 2026, from the UK CAA, Innovate UK and the European Space Agency. We are also part of NATO's multinational test and evaluation for counter-drone systems.

We started in lower airspace, where we know the domain best: 4DSKY, our community sensor network for aircraft tracking, with hundreds of active receivers across the UK and Europe. Funded programmes with the CAA, Innovate UK and the European Space Agency: federated surveillance for airspace modernisation, ground-based detect-and-avoid for drones, counter-drone sensing at a regional airport, and distributed acoustic drone detection. Deployments of airspace surveillance networks for defence and UAS operators.

Neuron is expanding rapidly. We are a team of 7 in London today, growing across product, engineering and delivery, and we are hiring exceptional people who want to build the infrastructure autonomous systems will run on. You would join early, with real ownership from your first week, share options in what you build, and work that goes straight into live operations at airports, along coastlines and in defence exercises.

The role

You own requirements, assurance and regulation across all our programmes, so that what we build meets its requirements and stands up to the regulator. You are our lead on regulation. That means turning a CAA programme into an assured surveillance coordination service, making sure a drone detect-and-avoid integration between two partners meets the assurance standard it is tested against, and setting the approvals route for counter-drone systems at a regional airport. You will also help answer one of the hardest questions in autonomy: how one organisation can trust another's sensors, drones and AI agents enough to rely on them in airspace and defence operations.

What you'll do

• Write and maintain requirements baselines, concepts of operation and interface control documents, and the test plans and evaluation reports that show each requirement is met, with traceability from each requirement to its test evidence.
• Lead the assurance work on a CAA airspace modernisation programme: the assurance framework, the method for judging whether surveillance is suitable for an operation, the evaluation reports and the relationship with the CAA.
• Build the safety case and CAP 3015 evidence for a detect-and-avoid integration, and the approvals route for a counter-drone trial at a regional airport.
• Manage our specialist assurance subcontractor.
• Check requirements with our Chief Architect before baselining them, and shape the trust and assurance parts of our protocol specification.
• Review deliverables for regulatory and technical accuracy before they go to funders.

What you'll bring

• Systems engineering in a regulated field: requirements flow-down, interface management, verification and validation.
• Safety or assurance evidence you wrote yourself: hazard analysis, safety cases or certification evidence.
• Working knowledge of aviation regulation (CAA, UTM, BVLOS, SORA), or a neighbouring regulated field and the ability to learn it fast.
• Clear technical writing that a regulator accepts.
• UK-based and eligible for SC clearance.

Nice to have

• Chartered engineer; CAP 3015, CAP 670 or SWIM; experience at an air navigation service provider or UTM provider; counter-UAS or defence programmes; assurance of AI or autonomous systems, such as JSP 936; model-based systems engineering tools.

What we offer

• Holiday: 25 days plus UK public holidays; one extra day for each year of service, up to five; your birthday off.
• Pension: Neuron pays 3% of your full basic salary.
• Share options: EMI options, vesting over four years with a one-year cliff.
• Sick pay: Up to 10 days at full pay a year once probation is complete.
• Working pattern: Remote until our London office opens, then one to three days a week there; flexible hours around a 10:00–16:00 UTC core.
• Development: Support for training and professional development.
• Probation: Six months.

Contractors are paid a day rate and do not receive the employee benefits. Work for defence customers needs SC clearance, so this role needs eligibility for it.

How we hire

We give feedback within 24 hours of each stage.

• A 30-minute screening call with Matt, our hiring partner.
• A one-hour conversation with our CEO and, for engineering roles, our Chief Architect or incoming Head of Engineering: one project you owned end to end, then a short live scenario.
• A short practical exercise on a fictional case (a delivery plan, a specification or a test plan, depending on the role), then a final discussion and your questions.