Associate Engineer Jobs in Leander, TX (NOW HIRING)

Company Overview
ACS (Allen Control Systems) is a defense technology company building precision robotic systems for the United States and its allies. Founded by two former U.S. Navy electrical engineers with deep experience in robotics and software, ACS brings together AI, computer vision, precision motion, and advanced hardware to solve complex defense challenges across land, air, and maritime environments.

Our flagship product, Bullfrog, is an autonomous precision weapon system that transforms existing weapons into highly accurate counter-drone systems — giving warfighters a scalable, cost-effective response to one of the fastest-growing threats on the modern battlefield. Bullfrog is deployed with U.S. forces, and ACS works with organizations throughout the U.S. military and national security community.

Following a $200 million Series B at a $2.2 billion valuation, ACS is rapidly expanding manufacturing, accelerating Bullfrog deployments, and developing the next generation of autonomous battlefield systems. This is an opportunity to join a proven, fast-moving team and help scale technology with direct, real-world impact on national security.

ACS is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with additional operations in Alexandria, Virginia; Mountain View, California; and Huntsville, Alabama. For more information, visit allencontrolsystems.com.

About The Role:

You'll join Allen Control Systems' Systems team — one team, three tracks (Systems, Systems Test, and Systems Reliability) reporting to the Director of Systems Engineering. We work cross-functionally across mechanical, electrical, software, controls, test, and operations to build ACS's autonomous weapon platforms including Bullfrog. We hire across all experience levels — from interns and new grads to senior engineers — and seek to grow the team's technical breadth and depth. There will be opportunities for management roles in the future as the team grows.

We are looking for a Systems Reliability Engineer to join our team, focusing on system-level reliability, verification, and risk reduction for our next-generation autonomous weapon platforms. This role sits closer to systems engineering than a traditional full-time reliability function and is responsible for defining how we evaluate system performance, analyze test data, identify failure modes, and drive clear pass/fail conclusions across hardware and software. The ideal candidate is hands-on, technically rigorous, and able to own the full loop from test planning through analysis, with particular strength in structured validation, environmental and performance testing, and safety-minded systems thinking.

This role sits inside the systems engineering group and can be filled with a Reliability or Safety focus — tell us which lane fits you best; strong generalists are welcome too.

We're hiring across multiple experience levels, including:

• Associate Engineer

• Engineer

• Senior Engineer

• Staff Engineer

• Senior Staff Engineer

Your title and level will be determined based on your experience, skills, and the scope of responsibility appropriate for the role.

What You'll Do:

• Define system-level reliability goals, risk-based verification priorities, and failure-focused evaluation criteria for autonomous weapon platforms — reasoning from first principles (physics of failure and the operating environment) rather than generic reliability checklists.

• Identify reliability-critical tests, stress cases, and operating conditions needed to expose failure modes before fielding.

• Analyze test and field data to identify failure modes, performance limits, degradation patterns, and reliability risks, and translate results into clear technical conclusions and recommended actions.

• Lead structured root-cause investigations for reliability failures across electrical, mechanical, software, and controls interfaces.

• Develop methods for reliability trending, failure categorization, and corrective-action tracking so the team can measure reliability growth over time.

• Support requirements verification by ensuring reliability risks, failure criteria, and hazard-informed concerns are reflected in system requirements and verification methods.

• Work with systems, mechanical, electrical, and software engineers to improve design robustness, observability, maintainability, and failure tolerance.

• Help define corrective actions, retest plans, and closure criteria for reliability-related issues.

• Contribute to hazard, risk, and mishap-informed engineering work, including reliability-focused systems analysis aligned with MIL-HDBK-781 style thinking.

• Drive a stronger reliability culture by improving failure ownership, analysis quality, corrective-action discipline, and technical follow-through across programs.

What You'll Need:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering or a related technical field.

• We hire across levels, and experience expectations scale accordingly — from interns and new grads (relevant coursework, projects, or prior internships) through senior engineers (roughly 3+ years in reliability engineering, systems engineering, failure analysis, verification, or engineering analysis).

• Familiarity with MIL-STD-882 or comparable system safety and risk-analysis frameworks.

• Experience identifying failure modes, reliability risks, and corrective actions from test or field data.

• Experience with environmental, performance, qualification, or durability-style testing and the practical challenges of collecting useful data in real test conditions.

• Comfort working across mechanical, electrical, software, and systems teams to improve reliability and technical rigor.

You'll Stand Out:

• Comfort working in a fast-paced startup environment with high ownership, incomplete information, and cross-functional technical responsibility.

• Proven track record of improving reliability, failure response, or risk-informed engineering rigor in mission-critical systems.

• A strong bias toward automation — building tooling to automate reliability trending, failure categorization, data analysis, and corrective-action tracking rather than doing it by hand.

• Experience with requirements management in JAMA or DOORS.

• Experience developing reliability measures such as MTBF and Operational Availability.

• Intellectual curiosity driving you to consistently find failure patterns and weak assumptions that others would miss.

What We Offer:

• Competitive salary

• ACS Equity Package

• Health, Dental, Vision Insurance

• Paid Time Off

Allen Control Systems is an Equal Opportunity Employer, providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment. Allen Control Systems prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.