Journey
Michael Sweatt
Senior Systems Engineer
Pittsburgh, PA
Requirements engineering and system safety leader with experience on certified, safety-critical platforms across rail, automotive, and locomotive domains. Currently lead requirements engineering for the rail industry's first cloud-based safety-critical train dispatch platform, authoring and governing a 500+ requirement subsystem specification with lifecycle traceability in Polarion. Prior decade at GM spanning ISO 26262 hazard analysis, FTA/SEFA, DFMEA, and fail-operational design across the BEV propulsion portfolio. Published empirical researcher on AI evaluation reliability in engineering workflows. Built and piloted an AI-augmented requirements-to-design pipeline (Polarion → version-controlled artifacts → traced wireframes → working prototype) now being rolled out across teams through the engineering AI Workgroup. Proven leading cross-functional teams of 30–50 engineers.
01 · Experience
Siemens Mobility
1 roleApril 2025 — Present
Senior Systems Engineer
Requirements engineering lead for a cloud-based, safety-critical train dispatch platform, moving safety-critical rail dispatch into a cloud environment.
- Author and own the Subsystem Requirements Specification (SSRS): 500+ requirements decomposed from the system-level SRS and defining how the dispatch platform manages trains, consumed downstream by the subsystem design specification, UI/UX specification, and customer-facing ICD
- Govern bidirectional traceability in Polarion from operational hazards through software-level safety requirements to verification: 400+ requirements refined from the system-level SRS, 300+ linked to test cases to date on the active program
- Decompose system hazards into software safety requirements for a distributed cloud architecture, working daily with software developers, the safety assurance team, testers, and the customer
- Validate operational requirements directly with customer dispatch stakeholders through interactive prototype demonstrations; reduced requirement validation cycles (weeks to days)
- Architected an AI-augmented requirements-to-design pipeline: read-only MCP extraction of Polarion specifications into version-controlled, machine-readable artifacts, driving requirement-traced UI wireframes and a working clickable prototype generated from the wireframes alone. Compressed requirements to wireframes from weeks to days on the pilot subsystem
- Surfaced specification defects (contradictory requirements, unspecified states, happy-path-only coverage) before implementation by designing every screen against the extracted requirement set
- Author and maintain the committed agent skills with structural guardrails (read-only by construction, boundary tripwires, content-hash drift detection)
General Motors
4 rolesAugust 2015 — April 2025
Lead Systems Technical Specialist
Provided technical leadership to 40+ propulsion system architects and engineers across GM's BEV portfolio (Cadillac Lyriq, Optiq, Silverado EV, Hummer EV).
- Conducted hazard analyses, Fault Tree Analyses (FTA), and Single Element Failure Analyses (SEFA) feeding SFMEAs and system safety assessments for high-voltage propulsion under ISO 26262
- Authored and decomposed safety requirements for fail-operational and degraded-mode strategies: single-motor limp-home for dual-motor configurations, half-pack operation under battery cell faults, and active discharge (HV bus below 60 V within 300 ms of key-off)
- Led cross-functional NACS charging diagnostic investigation (20+ SMEs, 8-week sprint) to root cause of fleet-wide charging failures traced to a stale legacy requirement, avoiding a potential recall across four nameplates; block and sequence diagrams adopted as standard DFMEA artifacts
- Reduced critical system failures in BEV propulsion to the 48 IPTV target through structured DFMEA methodology; mentored systems engineers in requirements development and DFMEA analysis
Advanced Battery Algorithm Engineer
Led team implementing battery diagnostics and prognostics enabling preemptive recalls of vehicles with potential fire hazards.
- Developed and validated battery life metric algorithms for dual-pack architectures in MATLAB/Simulink
- Accelerated software development 25% via SIL methodology
BEV Lead Systems Engineer
Authored Propulsion Subsystem Specifications and interface control documents for the EV portfolio.
- Led 15+ member integration teams and 50+ member product development forums
- Drove design decisions through system DFMEAs and program reviews
Hybrid Systems Engineer
Built foundational requirements-at-scale infrastructure for GM propulsion programs.
- Spearheaded migration of requirement specifications from Excel to IBM DOORS, designing a requirements management process adopted by subsequent propulsion programs
- Led European BEV feasibility study coordinating GM Europe and Streetscooter third-party vehicle integration
GE Transportation
2 rolesOctober 2009 — August 2015
Auxiliary Power Subsystem Team Lead
Directed auxiliary power distribution and battery charging systems for locomotives.
- Integral contributor to the GE Evolution Series Tier 4 launch (65–85% emissions reduction)
- Developed charging control strategies in C and MATLAB/Simulink
Edison Engineering Development Program
Competitive two-year rotational program: four engineering assignments plus graduate coursework applied toward M.S. at Georgia Tech.
- Completed 4 rotations across Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation, Engineering Quality, Diesel Engine Control, and Trip Optimizer
02 · Education
Master of Science in Electrical Engineering
December 2013Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering
May 200903 · Certifications
Project Management Professional (PMP)
Project Management Institute
DFSS Black Belt
General Motors
Deep Learning Specialization
Stanford University
Machine Learning Specialization
Stanford University
04 · Skills
Requirements Engineering
Functional Safety
AI-Augmented Engineering
Languages & Tools
05 · Selected Projects & Research
CraftRole
craftrole.comShipped an AI-powered career-discovery platform with a four-person team. Developed the repo-as-context operating model here first (authoritative CLAUDE.md, committed spec-generation and UX-audit skills, doc-lint, spec-first PRs).
AI-Assisted Requirements Decomposition System
Multi-agent system automating requirements decomposition workflows: 34% quality improvement over a manual baseline with 100% output consistency across 110 tests. Presented to Siemens engineering leadership as a proof of concept for AI-augmented requirements engineering.
The Meter and the Judge
Read the studyPre-registered empirical study (~4,000 measured API calls) on cost governance and LLM-as-judge reliability in AI-augmented engineering workflows. Task cost is stable and bandable, but judge–human agreement on quality was 54.9%, with 83% of disagreement traced to underspecified quality criteria.
Requirements Engineering Evals
Ongoing pre-registered evaluation framework for AI detection of requirement defects in safety-critical corpora, with a frozen corpus and human-only seed authorship protocols.