Senior Principal Program Planner

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon. We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.

AOA Xinetics (AOX), a wholly owned Northrop Grumman Space Systems, Payload and Ground Systems Division Business Unit, is a leading supplier of complex electro-optic and photonic systems and subsystems that control and manipulate light waves for a variety of applications. We are seeking a Senior Principal Program Planner to support operations in Devens, MA.

Learn more about AOX at https://www.northropgrumman.com/who-we-are/aoa-xinetics 

Overview

Reporting to the Director of Business Management, the program planner will be responsible for the development and maintenance of project schedules, process improvement, and resource forecasting.  Our ideal candidate will possess exceptional planning expertise and collaborative people skills with the proven ability to work within a technically dynamic, high-growth, fast-paced work environment.

Role and Responsibilities:

• Prepares, develops, and coordinates the integrated master plan and integrated master schedule (IMS) to meet all program objectives.

• Ensures major projects and program schedules and plans are horizontally and vertically integrated across company functional groups including finance, engineering, material, manufacturing, and quality.

• Work collaboratively with Manufacturing/Production Leadership to communicate program schedule requirements and with production planners to incorporate manufacturing line of balance details into IMS.

• Tracks plans and schedules, performs risk analysis, identifies, and resolves critical path and network logic conflicts.

• Utilizes Gantt, PERT, milestone charts, earned value management and other project management techniques to gauge progress and identify performance variances to facilitate focus and intervention on critical areas.

• Resource load schedules when applicable

• Assist in establishing EV/schedule/cost baseline and participate in integrated baseline review (IBR)

• Prepare IMS SDRLs when applicable

• Prepare and report program milestone status, schedule risks and potential resource conflicts.

• Create proposal schedules & support the identification of business risks as part of the proposal review process

• Lead the development and/or maintenance of AOX policies and standards associated with program & project scheduling and resource forecasting.  Update/maintain project template created in Microsoft Project.  Create standard product Microsoft Project templates.

• Support the establishment and promotion of planning standards to ensure schedule consistency on all AOX development and production programs.  Review Current Planning and Resource Forecast Processes and Suggest Improvements to Streamline

• Customer-facing responsibilities as it relates to Program Schedules; (i) may lead briefings and schedule review meetings with external customers; (ii) communicate schedule variances; (iii) perform schedule impact analyses related to change requests which is then communicated to the customers as part of AOX’s response to the change request.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree with 10+ years’ related work experience, or Master’s Degree with 8+ years of related work experience

• Experience in planning both development and transition to production programs

• Expert proficiency in Microsoft Project or other related scheduling tools as demonstrated by an understanding of the tool's properties and functions, including: exports and imports, multi-project consolidation, inter-project linkage, ability to create a variety of views, tables, filters, and reports

• Proficient with MS Office Suite, specifically Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.  Experience with exporting schedule data to Excel and/or PowerPoint to create productivity metric charts

• Experience using Schedule Health Analysis Tools, Critical Path Analysis Tool (Structured Solutions SSI Tool) and OnePager Pro or other milestone / summary schedule software

• Knowledge of Schedule Risk Assessment tools

• Understanding knowledge of NDIA’s Planning and Scheduling Excellence Guide (PASEG).

• Working knowledge of EVMS guidelines and processes

• Understand Critical Path methodology, analysis, and reporting

• Good communication skills required, both written and oral format

• Demonstrate successful interaction with internal and external customers

• Confident enforcing planning policies and processes as a member of the AOX Business Management Team

• Self-starter with the ability to work with minimal supervision

• Excellent time management skills.

• U.S. Citizenship is a requirement for employment

Preferred Qualifications:

• Aerospace/Defense Industry Experience

• Familiar with IPMDAR DI-MGMT-81861C

• Experience in supporting Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) and Integrated Baseline Reviews (IBRs)

• PMP Certification

• Experience with Project Server

Working Environment & Physical Requirements:

• The position has the option for hybrid telecommuting and will require the successful candidate to be within commuting distance of Devens, MA

• Ability to sit for extended periods of time and light physical effort required

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Salary Range: $107,000 USD - $160,600 USD

Employees may be eligible for a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay. Annual bonuses are designed to reward individual contributions as well as allow employees to share in company results. Employees in Vice President or Director positions may be eligible for Long Term Incentives. In addition, Northrop Grumman provides a variety of benefits including health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance, savings plan, Company paid holidays and paid time off (PTO) for vacation and/or personal business.

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.