Program Manager, Mission Autonomy, Active Clearance

ABOUT THE JOB

We are seeking a highly motivated Program Manager (PM) to oversee the software release lifecycle and development process within the Mission Autonomy division to support autonomous flight initiatives. In this role, you will lead the Internal Research & Development (IRAD) efforts to develop, integrate, test, and operationalize next-generation mission autonomy software onto airframes. You will spend your time collaborating with world-class software engineers, systems engineers, quality assurance, and flight test pilots to test and validate autonomy solutions in simulation and prove it in the air.

What You’ll Do

• Drive the Autonomy Roadmap: Own the end-to-end scope, schedule, budget, resource allocation, and execution of the Mission Autonomy IRAD (Internal Research and Development) roadmap.
• Lead Test & Evaluation Strategy: Own the strategy, development, and execution of team-controlled test environments (Simulation, Software-in-the-Loop, Hardware-in-the-Loop) and test infrastructure. Partner with Test & Evaluation (T&E) teams to coordinate real-world flight testing, ensuring software is thoroughly tested before live flight.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including software engineers, hardware engineers, chief engineers, program managers, business operations, and finance to meet the IRAD objectives.
• Facilitate Technical Decisions: Develop deep technical fluency in vehicle systems to effectively facilitate architectural discussions, evaluate engineering trade-offs, and drive team consensus.
• Unblock the Engineering Team: Anticipate bottlenecks, manage risk, make prioritization trade-offs, and clear administrative and logistical hurdles so engineers can focus on building.
• Strategic Capture: Manage capture programs by helping identify opportunities, assessing viability, developing a winning strategy, and supporting proposals.
• Report to Leadership: Provide clear, data-driven status updates, risk assessments, and flight-test debriefs to executive leadership and key stakeholders.

Required Qualifications

• Active U.S. Security Clearance: Must possess an active Secret clearance (TS/SCI strongly preferred).
• Technical Foundation: Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline.
• Proven PM Experience: 4+ years of technical program management, product management, or engineering leadership experience in the aerospace, defense, autonomous systems industries, or relevant industry.
• Bias for Action: Demonstrated ability to thrive in a fast-paced, ambiguous, and rapidly changing environment as a self-starter who gets things done.
• Travel: Ability to travel up to 30-50% to operations sites and test ranges.

Preferred Qualifications

• Active TS/SCI Security Clearance.
• Autonomy Expertise: Experience with autonomous command and control (C2), collaborative autonomy, or AI/ML-driven decision-making systems.
• Flight Test Experience: Direct hands-on experience planning, executing, and analyzing flight tests for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)—ideally Group 3, 4, or 5 platforms.
• Pilot or Operator Experience: Experience as a rated pilot (manned) or UAS operator (Group 3-5) is a significant plus.