Senior Sales Engineer - Mission Systems Integration

Aether Aerospace•California, MD

4d•$180,000 - $240,000•Onsite

About The Position

Aether Aerospace is seeking a Senior Sales Engineer to serve as its customer-facing technical sales specialist for priority differentiated products and mission-systems integration solutions. Working with Product Sales & Commercialization, Growth, Capture Leads, and Engineering, this role combines technical expertise and customer engagement to qualify product applications, demonstrate capabilities, develop credible solutions, and help convert customer interest into funded business. The position focuses on technically qualifying opportunities, demonstrating product applicability, resolving technical barriers to adoption, and advancing qualified opportunities toward funded integration and fielding. It supports the goal of accelerating priority product opportunities from non-recurring engineering (NRE) to fielding in approximately 24 months where technically and commercially feasible. This is a hands-on, highly customer-facing role for an experienced avionics or mission-systems engineer. The successful candidate will move among technical discovery, solution development, demonstrations, and capture support, bringing sufficient depth and judgment to establish credibility with Government and OEM engineering teams, develop initial integration approaches, and engage additional subject-matter experts when needed. The role is full-time and permanent, onsite in Huntsville, Alabama, and requires regular travel for customer meetings, demonstrations, technical interchanges, and industry events.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Electrical, Systems, Aerospace, or Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline; equivalent highly relevant experience may be considered.
10 or more years of relevant experience in defense systems engineering, mission systems integration, avionics, aircraft integration, weapons/stores integration, or related technical disciplines.
Demonstrated experience with avionics and mission-system architectures, interfaces, integration, verification/test, and laboratory or aircraft integration environments.
Working knowledge of MOSA and open architecture concepts and ability to apply them to real integration problems.
Experience participating in customer-facing technical discussions and translating operational or engineering needs into solution concepts and executable technical scope.
Experience supporting technical capture, solution selling, demonstrations, white papers, ROM development, and proposals in the DoD market.
Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly in meetings, briefings, demonstrations, white papers, and proposal content.
Ability to work across Growth, Engineering, Program Management, Contracts, Pricing, and external partner teams in a fast-moving capture environment.
Ability to obtain a Secret clearance.
Ability to travel regularly for customer meetings, demonstrations, technical interchanges, and industry events.

Nice To Haves

Active Secret clearance with TS eligibility preferred.
Hands-on experience with aircraft avionics interfaces/data buses, mission computers, weapons integration, software integration, or embedded mission systems.
Experience with SIL/HWIL environments, integration laboratories, flight-test support, or rapid prototyping.
Familiarity with FACE, SOSA, Time-Sensitive Networking, OMS/UCI, or other relevant open architecture standards and approaches.
Experience supporting Army Aviation, Air Force, NAVAIR, weapon-system OEMs, or major defense primes in a technical integration role.
Experience working across multiple aircraft platforms or adapting a common integration approach to different platform architectures.
Existing relationships within Army Aviation, Air Force aviation/armament, NAVAIR, or relevant OEM/prime contractor communities.

Responsibilities

Lead technical discovery with Government customers, OEMs, primes, and mission-system providers to understand platform architecture, interfaces, integration constraints, mission needs, and desired outcomes.
Represent Aether's priority products and differentiated solutions in customer meetings, technical interchange meetings, demonstrations, industry events, and partner discussions.
Identify and technically qualify customer use cases across aircraft platforms, mission systems, weapons/stores, sensors, avionics, autonomy, and related integration environments; assess applicability, feasibility, and reuse potential.
Communicate Aether's technical capabilities clearly and credibly to technical and non-technical audiences without overpromising performance or applicability.
Develop initial solution concepts, integration approaches, system/interface architectures, demonstration plans, and prototype concepts based on customer requirements.
Assess technical feasibility, interfaces, dependencies, risks, test needs, and integration constraints for prospective applications.
Support technical discussions involving avionics interfaces and data buses, mission computers, weapons/stores integration, software hosting, SIL/HWIL environments, open architectures, and aircraft integration/test.
Work with Aether engineering teams to translate customer needs into executable technical scope and repeatable, technically supportable solutions.
Lead technical planning, preparation, and execution of customer-facing product demonstrations and technical engagement plans, coordinating with Product and Engineering around customer use cases and decision milestones.
Translate customer technical requirements into product configurations, integration approaches, and recommendations that support purchasing decisions and funded opportunities.
Partner with Product Sales & Commercialization and Capture Leads to advance opportunities from technical discovery through customer validation, solution development, proposal preparation, and funding decisions.
Identify technical barriers to adoption and recommend actions to improve product readiness, integration efficiency, and fielding potential.
Coordinate with Capture Leads to align technical solutions, demonstrations, and prototype strategies with customer requirements, capture strategies, and acquisition timelines.
Develop or contribute technical content for capability briefs, white papers, RFIs/RFQs, proposals, statements of work, technical volumes, and rough-order-of-magnitude estimates.
Help define technical scope, assumptions, labor and skill mix, schedule, hardware and software needs, and risks for ROMs and proposals.
Support teaming and partner discussions by defining Aether's technical role, interfaces, dependencies, and value within proposed solutions.
Identify recurring customer requirements, integration patterns, and lessons learned to inform product roadmaps, investment priorities, and solution development.
Distinguish reusable product capabilities from customer-specific engineering to support scalable delivery and avoid unnecessary one-off solutions.
Maintain awareness of platform modernization, MOSA/open architecture, avionics, weapons integration, autonomy, and mission-system trends that may create new applications for Aether's offerings.