Systems Architect / Project Design Authority (PDA) (m/f/d)

As a Systems Architect / PDA at Thales, you guide technical direction across bids and projects in defense and cyber security domains. You translate customer needs into secure, scalable architectures while ensuring compliance with regulations and product strategies. You’ll lead risk assessments, coordinate with cross-functional teams, and act as the primary technical contact for stakeholders. This role offers impact on complex, mission-critical systems and opportunities to shape secure, cutting-edge solutions.

• creative freedom
• career path opportunities
• diversity actively promoted
• international exposure

• Understand customer requirements, context and objectives; provide technical leadership throughout bid and project lifecycle
• Serve as primary technical point of contact for internal/external stakeholders; ensure alignment on technical matters
• Review and validate architectures and designs for architecture maturity, requirements compliance and regulatory constraints
• Ensure compliance with product strategies, standards and policies; promote reuse of building blocks
• Lead technical risk assessments and implement mitigation plans
• Collaborate with production and service to ensure manufacturability and alignment of development and production objectives
• Work with architects to ensure solutions meet customer needs and organizational objectives
• Partner with Engineering Delivery Managers to plan and facilitate technical reviews and integrate risk actions into delivery plans

• Several years in product architecture, system design and complex technical solution development
• Expertise in defining architectures for application software and embedded systems
• Ability to translate requirements into secure, scalable technical solutions
• Advanced knowledge of cryptography, including PKC standards, secure communications, key lifecycle management and security certification frameworks
• Understanding of industry standards, accreditation processes, and regulatory frameworks for secure systems
• Experience with MBSE methodologies and tools (Capella, Enterprise Architect, SysML, UML, Polarion)
• Knowledge of key management standards/interfaces (DS-101/102, EKMS 308/603, NKMIS, SCIP, NINE, StaCIS)
• Awareness of cybersecurity/cryptography market trends
• Professional proficiency in English and German

• Effective stakeholder communication
• Strong collaboration across cross-functional teams
• Problem solving and analytical thinking
• MBSE (Capella, Enterprise Architect, SysML, UML)
• Requirements management (Polarion)
• Cryptography fundamentals and PKI