Northrop Grumman’s Aeronautics Systems Sector is seeking a Software Engineering (CoTE) Director to support Software-related efforts. This leadership opportunity reports to the Software Center of Technical Excellence Director, and will be located at one of our core sites (Melbourne, FL; Oklahoma City, OK; Palmdale, CA; San Diego, CA; or El Segundo, CA). Candidates must be willing and able to travel up to 25% of the time.
The Director will unite programs, engineers, and technical experts under a shared set of tools, processes, and practices to ensure a consistent, cohesive, and collaborative approach across all AS sector programs.
The ideal Director is an influential connector and trusted steward of their discipline — combining deep technical expertise with a passion for technical training and development, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
Responsibilities will include, but are not limited to:
Provide leadership and define strategic vision for technical priorities within Software discipline, aligned to long-term sector strategy.
Develop the strategy, plan, execute and deploy software frameworks that assist with software development in flight critical software, mission software, full-stack software applications on ground stations, full stack software on training platforms
Stand-up technical standards into a Everything-as-code ecosystem
Regularly interface with EI&E discipline leads to identify program needs and close gaps in engineering tools, processes, digital solutions, and technical training.
Lead the development, deployment, and sustainment of sector-wide engineering tools, standardized processes, digital solutions, and technical training-- ensuring they are relevant, scalable, and interoperable across programs.
Oversee and allocate the discipline’s NCTA and indirect budgets to strengthen technical excellence; advance tools, processes, and workforce capabilities; and generate measurable impact on program performance and future competitiveness.
Represent the discipline in sector-wide and enterprise-wide technical development efforts related to technical development, technical career pathing, technical training, and critical skills investment.
Participate in sector-level talent reviews and succession planning to maintain discipline-wide visibility into talent strengths, gaps, and growth opportunities.
Provide leadership, alignment, and support to NG Fellows within the discipline to advance sector- and enterprise-wide emerging technologies and future workforce capabilities.
Contribute technical expertise and process leadership in major proposal reviews, program reviews, independent technical reviews, program stand-up reviews, NCTA and indirect activities, and other sector-wide improvement efforts.
Act as a trusted advisor to help resolve technical performance shortfalls through root cause analysis, corrective action planning, long-term verification of improvement.
Capture, share, and embed lessons learned and best practices across programs to continuously raise the bar for technical performance.
Our Leaders at Northrop Grumman live our values daily and encourage our teams to do the same. We do the right thing: upholding the highest ethical standards and facilitating a safe and respectful environment that attracts, retains, and inspires a diverse and engaged team. We do what we promise: holding yourself and others accountable to meet predictable and balanced results. We commit to shared success: operating as OneNG and removing barriers for our teams. Finally, We pioneer: setting a vision that shapes the future and inspires others.
Basic Qualifications:
Must have a Bachelor’s of Science degree in a Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) discipline AND 9 years of related professional/military experience within the Aerospace and Defense industry that includes a background in leadership positions, OR a Master’s of Science degree in a STEM discipline and 7 years of related professional/military experience within the Aerospace and Defense industry that includes a background in leadership positions
Minimum 6 years of Software leadership/management experience in an integrated product team environment leading agile development teams
Experience working across the total software program lifecycle
Expertise in establishing engineering standards, tools, and processes at scale.
Experience with or exposure to digital design initiatives and solutions
Experience with commercial Software licensing models and managing commercial software tool portfolios
Knowledge of modern industry practices for developing software defined systems.
Experience in Avionics, Vehicle, Systems Engineering, Global Supply Chain, and Test processes and tools where they overlap and/or are adjacent to Software processes and tools. (e.g. Software defined LRUs, Software Configuration Management, Software Integration and Test, Software procurement, auto-generated GNC Software.)
Must have the ability to obtain and maintain a government issued Secret clearance that is in scope or currently enrolled in continuous evaluation, with the ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret/SCI clearance as determined by business needs
Must be able to attain and maintain Special Program Access (PAR) within a reasonable amount of time as determined by business needs.
Preferred Qualifications:
Experience leading the design, implementation and deployment of an “everything as code” ecosystem, including infrastructure, configuration, policies, pipelines, environments and application/platform components.
Experience leading teams that develop reusable software frameworks, platforms and developer tooling that are used and adopted across multiple projects, teams or products.
Experience in defining and developing software processes and defining tools in alignment with the DOD Dev*Ops Reference architecture
Experience with transitioning teams into an Artificial Intelligence (AI) assisted environment, using Large Language Models (LLM) and agentic services
Active U.S. Government in-scope Secret security clearance.
Current Special Program Access (PAR).
MS or MBA degree
Program management experience
Continuous improvement mindset with experience leading process optimization.
Strategic, systems-level thinker who can build alignment across functional and program boundaries.