Senior Mission Engineer

The Enterprise Effects Division (EED) drives integration of Aerospace’s strategic capabilities across the national space enterprise. The division leverages a broad array of engineering disciplines against a diverse and dynamic portfolio of programs, customers, and national challenges. EED spans the capability lifecycle from concept and architecture design to performance assessment to application of space and space-enabled capabilities. 

The Mission Engineering Department provides technical expertise and leadership in mission engineering methods, processes, and tools to a broad range of customers, including National Security Space (NSS) and other defense programs, NASA, NOAA, NNSA, and others. Members of the Mission Engineering Department evaluate and assess customer mission-integration needs and/or challenges, develop end-to-end mission threads, and provide timely advice, make recommendations to enterprise leaders on risks, issues, and gaps, and develop recommended solutions to enable desired mission outcomes. The Mission Engineering Department applies the mission-engineering tradecraft to build and analyze end-to-end effects-chains.  

Senior Engineering Specialists typically serve as senior technical authority, consultant, primary investigator, or team leader on one or more projects. They lead or organize interfaces between customers' and Aerospace technical and management staff, coordinate large-scale technical efforts across program/project lines, mentor and serve as role models for junior staff. 

The Mission Engineering Department and the Systems Engineering & Launch Division (SELD) are seeking a motivated Senior Engineering Specialist to lead Aerospace’s contributions to the Enterprise Portfolio Manager charged with the Mission Integration/Warfighter Support (MIWS) Capability Area within the customer's Systems Engineering Directorate.  The MIWS Enterprise Integration Lead (Senior Engineering Specialist – Enterprise Systems Engineering) contributes to customer and Aerospace activities for end-to-end architecture, engineering, analysis and cross-enterprise integration of advancement and oversight activities aligned to improved multi-int capabilities and capacities for both Intelligence Community and Department of Defense needs and expectations. 

Work Model

This is an on-site position based in Chantilly, VA 

What You’ll Be Doing 

• Providing day-to-day situational awareness of issues and efforts across the MIWS customer portfolio and offering advice and counsel as a trusted direct-support advisor to that designated customer lead. 

• Assisting the customer to shape and enable this comprehensive portfolio of effort underway in prioritization, planning, oversight and execution of advancement and capability development activities. 

• Developing and delivering enterprise-level assessments against MIWS activities and offering specific plans of action or mitigation against emerging issues directly to the MIWS customer 

• Lead Aerospace’s on end-to-end capability delivery: 

• Providing problem framing and execution oversight to analytic studies aligned to MIWS emerging questions or efforts; 

• Enabling the development and maturation of architectural options and recommendations to resolve MIWS complex set of challenges; 

• Develop and manage the enterprise engineering tasks necessary to for aligned lifecycle oversight and readiness activities, capability adoption and operational integration efforts. 

• Lead the MIWS collaboration across other SED customer portfolios, EPM, other EILs and office managers with their respective Aerospace integration leads to provide broader awareness and synchronization of policy, system engineering, architecting and analysis efforts within the Aerospace’s Systems Engineering Directorate. 

• Identify and manage resource identification and execution of Aerospace personnel in support of MIWS; identify and lead the technical contributors focused on delivery impact.   

What You Need to be Successful  

Minimum Requirements – Senior Engineering Specialist - Enterprise Systems Engineering: 

• You must hold a Bachelor’s degree in a technical field, or a Bachelor’s degree and equivalent technical experience 

• Minimum 12 or more years of increasingly responsible professional engineering/scientific experience. 

• Relevant technical, programmatic, policy, strategy development and operational domain experience. 

• Experience within multi-disciplinary systems engineering and/or program management environments, including the ability to work across architectural, engineering, and analytic domains and across all phases of development, design, and system acquisition. 

• Ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with senior customer leadership and successfully function within mixed teams comprised of senior government, FFRDC, and SETA personnel. 

• Willing to travel [occasionally to work location or customer site/domestically/internationally] approx. % of the time. 

• This position requires a TS/SCI security clearance and polygraph, which is issued by the U.S. government. U.S. citizenship is required to obtain a security clearance. 

How You Can Stand Out 

It would be impressive if you have one or more of these: 

• An advanced degree in an appropriate technical discipline. 

• Experience with Model-Based Systems Engineering concepts, methods, and practices. 

• Experience across multiple customer offices and agencies spanning both the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense Operations 

• Knowledge of Aerospace engineering reach-back capabilities and experience with identifying tasks and managing engineering reach-back support. 

• Understanding of military and operational concepts 

• Supported military command and control efforts and related policy initiatives  

• Previous experience working with and executing military operations 

• Prior management and leadership experience