Industrial Placement - Systems Engineer

Location: GB - Southampton

Job Description

Your impact

Are you ready to make an impact and gain hands-on experience working on real-world projects from day one?

At Leonardo, we’re looking for industrial placement students who want to be part of something extraordinary—shaping innovation, advancing technology, and enhancing global safety.

Our placements are designed to help you apply your studies in a practical setting, develop your technical skills, and gain valuable insight into how our business operates.

Our Industrial Placement Programme

Our Industrial Placement Programme offers you the chance to spend a year with us, working on meaningful projects alongside industry leaders, within multidisciplinary teams, and across the product lifecycle. You’ll receive a salary of £26,228, with coaching and support from a dedicated team to help you achieve both your placement objectives and personal development goals.

Successful completion of an Industrial Placement with Leonardo may also lead to an offer on our Graduate Development Programme.

During your placement, we encourage you to spend at least 3 days a week on site to integrate with your team and maximise your learning experience.

As an Industrial Placement Systems Engineer, you will

Be involved in all aspects of design and development; from initial product design through to in-service support.

You will look at the big picture — determining how the system needs to operate and collaborating with others to deliver the required overall operational behaviours. You’ll also dive into the finer details, breaking the system down piece by piece and defining each element of its design. As a Systems Engineer, you may also contribute to research and development, exploring new concepts and advancing the technologies that will shape our future products.

As a Industrial Placement Systems Engineer, you will work on real engineering problems. You will have the opportunity to be involved in supporting a wide range of tasks across multiple projects/products, which covers Sea, Land, Air and space domains.

You will join a dynamic and innovative team who will provide day-to-day guidance and on-the-job training, introducing you to systems engineering processes, methods, technology and tools. You will also receive targeted training, developing the engineering skills and necessary domain knowledge required to achieve technical excellence and be a successful Systems Engineer.

What you will bring

All of our Industrial Placement roles require a minimum of a predicted 2:2 grade in a relevant degree discipline. For technical roles please note that our preferred degree disciplines include Physics, Mathematics, Engineering, or other STEM subject degrees.

In addition to this, we would be interested in hearing from you if you have experience in:

Coding/programming.

Relevant project work and/or placements in industry.

Solving problems as part of a team.

Applying your science and technology knowledge to solve a real world problem.

Security Clearance

Many of our roles are subject to security and export control restrictions set by UK Government Security requirements and customer obligations.  As a result, and in line with the UK Government Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) requirements, all successful applicants will be asked to provide evidence of identity, eligibility to work in the UK, criminal record declaration information and employment and/or education history verification for the previous five years.

For staff operating in more sensitive posts, there is an additional range of personnel security controls referred to as National Security Vetting (NSV).  As part of this process, a range of factors may be considered, including an individual's background, travel history, nationality, previous nationalities held and other information relevant to the vetting assessment.

To be eligible for National Security Vetting at SC level, applicants will generally be expected to have continuously resided in the UK for the previous five years. For DV clearance, this is typically ten years.  In some circumstances, time spent overseas may be accepted, with additional overseas checks.  Additional vetting requirements may apply upon appointment.

For more information and guidance please visit: https://careers.uk.leonardo.com/gb/en/security-and-vetting

Why join us

At Leonardo, our people are at the heart of everything we do, key contributors in shaping innovation, advancing technology, and enhancing global safety.

We offer a comprehensive, company-funded benefits package that supports your wellbeing, career development, and work–life balance. Whether you're looking to grow professionally, care for your health, or plan for the future, we’re here to help you thrive.

Time to recharge: Enjoy generous leave with the opportunity to accrue up to 12 additional flexi-days each year.

Secure your future: Benefit from our award-winning pension scheme with up to 15% employer contribution.

Your wellbeing matters: Free access to mental health support, financial advice, and employee-led networks championing inclusion and diversity.

Tailored perks: Spend up to £500 annually on flexible benefits including private healthcare, dental, family cover, tech & lifestyle discounts, gym memberships and more.

For a full list of our company benefits please visit: https://careers.uk.leonardo.com/gb/en/company-benefits

We are committed to building an inclusive, accessible, and welcoming workplace. We believe that a diverse workforce sparks creativity, drives innovation, and leads to better outcomes for our people, communities and our customers. If you have any accessibility requirements to support you during the recruitment process, just let us know.

Start your extraordinary career – apply now!

Primary Location

GB - Southampton

Contract Type

Fixed term

Hybrid Working

Hybrid