Chief Engineer Principal

Lockheed Martin•Albuquerque, NM

2d•Onsite

About The Position

Lockheed Martin Space is seeking a Chief Engineer for a software ground system on a potential National Security Space program (pending contract award). This role is critical for connecting technologies, security, and humanity through space innovation. The Chief Engineer will lead the technical direction, define system capabilities, oversee integration, and ensure the ongoing operation and improvement of space mission ground systems. The position requires broad experience in software engineering, development, and operations, focusing on creating future-ready solutions with resiliency and urgency. The successful candidate will contribute to shaping a new era in space, ensuring security and prosperity through advanced spacecraft and workforce development. This position is contingent upon contract award to Lockheed Martin, with an estimated award date of October/November 2026.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering (or related technical field) or equivalent experience/combined education.
Knowledge and experience with ground systems agile software development and sustainment for space systems related tasking, planning, command and control, data delivery, data processing, data exploitation and data visualization, including defining new ground system features and solution designs.
Experience supporting software system cost estimating; awareness of cost account management principles, techniques, and processes.
Demonstrated experience as a technical leader, coordinating across multiple teams.
Demonstrated ability to communicate successfully across all levels of an organization from entry level to executive Vice Presidents.
U.S. citizenship with an Active TS security clearance with the ability to be granted an SCI.

Nice To Haves

Broad understanding of the U.S. Government’s customer’s ground systems environment; including cybersecurity and deployment requirements and standards.
Demonstrated Experience leading a ground system software development effort, including testing and feature/requirement verification and sell-off activities.
Demonstrated Experience integration of new space missions/platforms into a common satellite operations center.
Demonstrated Experience with Ground Terminal operations and sustainment.
Demonstrated Experience supporting, sustaining and enhancing software developed by another team/contractor.
Experience with the U.S. Space Force’s Satellite Control Network (SCN).
Experience with delivering software via DevSecOps.
Experience establishing and forming a new project team distributed across multiple locations.
Ability to organize, motivate and lead groups of engineering personnel, and demonstrate in-depth technical skills.

Responsibilities

Delivering end to end mission capability while managing the technical baseline and serving as chair of the Engineering Review Board (ERB) and Requirements to Operations Management Board (ROMB).
Leads requirements development, decomposition, and verification that requirements/features are complete, consistent, and traceable across all contractual documents and the system architecture.
Define and lead the team’s execution of processes and procedures for the 24x7 support and sustainment of existing customer ground systems for execution of spacecraft missions ensuring continuous high system availability and long-term maintenance health of the systems.
Leads verification and validation (V&V) planning and execution, including test plan definition, test bed and simulator requirements, and test article development.
Lead/support development of solution approaches for new task orders added to the program.
Support execution and new business across the NSS/SOA mission segment through shared collaboration, innovation concepts and support to other programs/efforts as requested.
Establishes senior technical program business rhythms (e.g., daily ops status, monthly status brief, quarterly risk review) and ensures engineering best practices and standards are applied.
Acts as the primary technical point of contact for reporting technical status of the program to customers and internal to Lockheed Martin Space, including Enhanced Program Reporting System (EPRS) coordination.
Identify and implement cost, schedule, and/or quality improvement initiatives especially as they are enabled by new digital capabilities being fielded by the enterprise.
During program execution, management and timely resolution of the program top technical issues to include assembling the teams, providing technical guidance, engaging the enterprise, and communicating with the customers.