Space TS/SCI - Staff Engineer Systems - Chief Engineer (Up to $15K Sign On Bonus)

Join Northrop Grumman on our continued mission to push the boundaries of possible across land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. Enjoy a culture where your voice is valued and start contributing to our team of passionate professionals providing real-life solutions to our world’s biggest challenges. We take pride in creating purposeful work and allowing our employees to grow and achieve their goals every day by Defining Possible. With our competitive pay and comprehensive benefits, we have the right opportunities to fit your life and launch your career today.

The Payload and Ground Systems Division within the Northrop Grumman Space Systems pushes the boundaries of innovation, redefines engineering capabilities, and drives advances in various sciences. Our team is chartered with providing the skills, innovative technologies to develop, design, produce and sustain optimized product lines across the sector while providing a decisive advantage to the warfighter. Come be a part of our mission!

We offer phenomenal learning opportunities, exposure to a wide variety of projects and customers, and a very friendly collaborative workplace. We are looking for self-motivated, proactive, and goal-oriented people to help us grow our services and become even better at what we do. Does this sound like you?

The Payload and Ground Systems Division (PGSD) has an immediate need for a Chief Engineer to lead and develop next generation space systems solutions. The chief engineer has technical authority for all aspects of engineering on all program elements (systems/hardware/software/ support/integration and test) and leads a multi-disciplined engineering team managing the technical performance of the product/program satisfying the allocated cost and schedule requirements. This specific role is to lead the development, manufacture, and sustainment of an optical system for space applications.

Responsibilities for the Chief Engineer can include:

• Ensures that the program is adhering to sound engineering processes in the development, production, test and sustainment products for our customers and is compliant with company policy, procedures, and quality standards
• Maintains cognizance over technical activities within program Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) and ensures horizontal integration of the best engineering practices across the company
• The Chief Engineer is expected to mentor Senior IPT leaders as part of this position
• The Chief Engineer typically supports large development/production programs with contract values up to $75M that have medium/high risks with established or state-of-the-art processes
• Maintaining knowledge of current and developing technologies and developing strategies for their insertion into both legacy and next-generation sensors
• Providing physics level and mission level subject matter expertise
• Guiding system implementation approaches for operational concepts
• Authoring technical documentation such as white papers, proposal technical volumes, program milestone briefings (i.e. SRR, PDR, CDR, MRR,etc), systems engineering design documentation
• Provide technical oversight to sub-contractors to ensure requirements and quality standards are met.
• Coordinating requirements development
• Hardware/software design oversight
• Verification and validation test activities

• Performing key systems engineering elements to meet a given program’s requirements
• Supporting the design and development of sensor system architectures
• Performing functional analysis, timeline analysis, detailed trade studies, requirements allocation, and interface definition studies to translate customer requirements into hardware and software specifications
• Responsibility for close customer cooperation to ensure that requirements meet customer expectations
• Providing presentations to customers and senior management, with tailored material based on the audience
• Leading / overseeing technical work products developed by the larger engineering team, supporting design reviews and integration and test activities as needed
• capability assessments to predict requirement compliance
• functional algorithm development
• risk assessment and burn down of mitigation steps
• generating and reporting system Technical Performance Measures
• Interface development and documentation

In addition, the ideal candidate has recent experience in the fields of Electro-Optical and Infrared Sensors (EO/IR), Fiber Optics, Laser physics, LiDAR, optical alignment, and development and manufacture of optical systems.

As the Chief Engineer, you will be expected to demonstrate the following behaviors:

Knowledge, Skills and Ability - Apply advanced technical principles, theories, and concepts. Contributes to the development of new principles and concepts.

Problem Solving - Work on unusually complex technical problems and provide solutions which are highly innovative and ingenious.

Discretion/Latitude - Works under consultative direction toward predetermined long-range goals and objectives. Assignments are often self-initiated. Determine and pursue courses of action necessary to obtain desired results. Work checked through consultation and agreement with others rather than by formal review of superior.

Impact - Develops advanced technological ideas and guides their development into a final product. Erroneous decisions or recommendations would typically result in failure to achieve critical organizational objectives and effect the image of the organization technological capability.

Liaison - Serves as organization spokesperson on advanced projects and/or programs. Acts as advisor to management and customers on advanced technical research studies and applications.

Basic Qualifications:

• BS degree in BS degree in Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Physics or related technical degree with 14+ years (or MS with 12+ years, or PhD with 9+ years) related experience
• Theoretical knowledge of the System Engineering V-Model and hands on experience executing the systems engineering work flow on space programs
• Demonstrated analytical thinking, problem solving skills, and creativity
• Excellent decision making and communication (written and oral) skills
• Team players with a strong work ethic and initiative to perform in a cross functional team
• Demonstrated previous Systems Engineering leadership experience on major Government Systems Acquisitions       
• Ability and willingness to travel up to 15%   
• Ability to obtain Top Secret clearance with special access

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Active Top Secret Clearance with SCI & polygraph is preferred
• Knowledgeable in orbit planning in LEO, GEO, xGEO orbital regimes
• Prior leadership experience in Chief Engineer role or equivalent
• Subject matter expert in EO/IR, laser physics, LiDAR, optical alignment, and development and manufacture of optical systems
• Full life cycle experience developing, integrating, and deploying space systems
• Knowledgeable in space systems design and mission planning
• Experience in development and earned value management of cost accounts and schedules as related to Systems Engineering tasks
• Ability to monitor hardware and software design teams with critical insight to know when the teams are not on path to successful implementation and then be able help steer the team to a successful solution
• Knowledge of MATLAB, SysML, Python, or other scripting languages
• Recent experience creating integration and test, design verification test and flight test plans and procedures
• Agile development experience a plus

The health and safety of our employees and their families is a top priority. The company encourages employees to remain up-to-date on their COVID-19 vaccinations. U.S. Northrop Grumman employees may be required, in the future, to be vaccinated or have an approved disability/medical or religious accommodation, pursuant to future court decisions and/or government action on the currently stayed federal contractor vaccine mandate under Executive Order 14042 https://www.saferfederalworkforce.gov/contractors/.

Northrop Grumman is committed to hiring and retaining a diverse workforce. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer, making decisions without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, or any other protected class. For our complete EEO/AA and Pay Transparency statement, please visit http://www.northropgrumman.com/EEO. U.S. Citizenship is required for most positions.