Staff Project Management - Tech Ops / Staffing Engineering Lead

Northrop Grumman•San Diego, CA

2d•$146,300 - $219,500•Onsite

About The Position

Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems has an opening for a Staff Project Manager to join our team of qualified, diverse individuals in our Systems Engineering organization. This role is located onsite in Rancho Bernardo. CA, El Segundo, CA or Palmdale, CA. In this role, you will be responsible for many aspects of staffing, noted categorically below. To be successful in this position, you would consider yourself a self-starter with a familiarity with technical operations and staffing.

Requirements

Must have a Bachelors degree in Business, Engineering, HR, or a related field, and at least 12 years of relevant military / professional experience (e.g., program staffing, workforce planning, project management, or operations), OR a Master's Degree in Business, Engineering, HR, or a related field and at least 10 years of relevant military / professional experience (e.g., program staffing, workforce planning, project management, or operations), OR a Ph.D. in Business, Engineering, HR, or a related field, and at least 8 years of relevant military / professional experience (e.g., program staffing, workforce planning, project management, or operations)
Must have experience working in a complex engineering or technical environment supporting multiple stakeholders.
Must have experience with workforce planning, staffing coordination, or resource management (e.g., tracking demand vs supply, managing requisitions, or coordinating assignments).
Must have an active US Government Secret or higher clearance (with a background investigation completed within the last 6 years or currently enrolled into Continuous Evaluation).
Must have the ability to obtain and maintain Special Access Program (SAP) / PAR clearance within a reasonable amount of time as determined by business needs.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting staffing in an aerospace/defense or similar highly regulated environment.
Familiarity with engineering labor categories, WBS structures, BOEs, and program execution concepts (cost, schedule, technical performance).
Experience with staffing and HRIS/ATS tools (e.g., Workday, staffing trackers, or similar systems).
Experience managing staffing for programs with classified work, including coordination of clearance and access requirements.
Demonstrated success driving improvements in staffing processes, metrics, or cycle times.

Responsibilities

Maintain an integrated staffing plan for assigned programs/IPTs aligned to contract scope, WBS, budgets, and key milestones (e.g., PDR, CDR, TRR).
Consolidate 6–12 month staffing demand from CAMs/IPT leads and functional managers by skill set, labor category, grade, and clearance.
Regularly update staffing demand based on changes in scope, schedule, or funding and highlight gaps or surpluses to program and functional leadership.
Coordinate assignment of internal engineers (transfers, rotations, redeployments) to open positions within the program in partnership with functional managers.
Track onboarding for new hires and transfers (clearance, equipment, system access, required training) and escalate issues that delay full productivity or impact schedule.
Ensure position assignments, labor categories, and charge numbers are accurately reflected in staffing tools and trackers.
Monitor program staffing mix (skills, grades, labor categories) against baseline plans and contractual requirements.
Identify over/under-qualification or misaligned labor category usage and coordinate corrective actions with functional leadership and program finance.
Support optimization of skill mix to balance technical capability, cost, and schedule performance.
Maintain position-level visibility of clearance and access requirements for the assigned program/IPTs.
Coordinate with Security on investigations, upgrades, and visit/access needs; track status against required need dates.
Identify clearance-driven risks and communicate potential impacts to program leadership.
Maintain program-level staffing trackers and dashboards (open reqs, fill status, clearance pipeline, utilization or coverage risks).
Prepare and present staffing status, trends, and risks for program reviews (PPRs, IPRs, EAC reviews) and other leadership forums.
Identify staffing-related risks and issues (skills gaps, single points of failure, aging vacancies, clearance delays); document them in the risk/issue registers and track mitigation actions such as cross-training and backfill plans.
Execute established staffing processes, trackers, and templates defined by the engineering organization and sector.
Recommend and implement local improvements to reduce cycle time, improve data quality, and enhance coordination across CAMs/IPT leads, functional managers, and Talent Acquisition.