Question: what do you do as an earth observation systems engineer

Alexander Finch answered on 17 Mar 2014:

Mainly, I work as part of quite a large team working out what future Earth Observation satellites will look like and what they will do. Others in the team are building, testing and managing satellites that are already built, but my job mainly involves satellites which are still on the drawing board and will launch in 5 years or more.

A systems engineer is the engineer who tries to make everything work together. Satellites, like other things engineers build, are made up of systems and parts designed by many other engineers. Every complex project needs systems engineers to make sure that everything works together correctly!