Senior Staff Systems Engineer - Enterprise Ifc Lead

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman · Aerospace · San Diego, CA +4 · Systems/Architecture/Test

Senior Staff Systems Engineer role focused on leading Enterprise Integrated Functional Capability (IFC) across multiple contracts, developing long-range strategies, managing development pipelines, and ensuring integration and compliance within a defense organization. Requires strong systems engineering, technical leadership, and stakeholder management skills.

What you'd actually do

  1. Serve as the Enterprise IFC Lead and technical authority for integrated capability delivery across multiple contracts and interdependent baselines.
  2. Develop, own, and maintain the long range IFC strategy and multi year roadmap that meets contractual obligations while minimizing OU impacts.
  3. Implement a consolidated baseline development pipeline, automated configuration management, and modern integration, test and release practices and integrate these with legacy customer processes.
  4. Coordinate cross OU sequencing, handoffs, and integration to prevent schedule, cost, or performance conflicts and preserve baseline integrity.
  5. Negotiate and align priorities with OU Senior Directors, CE office, and customer representatives to resolve conflicts and establish enterprise level decisions.

Skills

Required

  • Bachelor’s Degree in a STEM discipline and at least 14 years of related engineering experience; OR a Master’s degree in a STEM discipline and at least 12 years of related experience; OR a PhD in a STEM discipline and at least 10 years of related experience.
  • Active US Government Top Secret clearance
  • Ability to obtain and maintain Special Access Program (SAP) clearance
  • Systems engineering across the full lifecycle (requirements management, system architecture, integration & test, sustainment)
  • Technical leadership
  • Stakeholder management
  • Negotiation skills
  • Aligning cross organization priorities
  • Resolving interdependent schedule/cost/performance conflicts
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills
  • Presenting technical status, risks, and tradeoffs to senior executive and customer leadership

Nice to have

  • Current applicable Special Access Program (SAP) clearance.
  • Advanced degree (MS or PhD) in Systems Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline.
  • Experience leading large-scale, cross-functional engineering initiatives in a highly regulated environment.
  • Proven experience implementing Scaled Agile Framework on large programs
  • Understands hardware agnostic design patterns to implement backwards compatibility
  • Understands Program Increment planning for release trains
  • How to segregate different subsystems based on areas of concern like safety critical threads.

What the JD emphasized

  • SAP clearance
  • regulatory, security, and customer process requirements
  • highly regulated environment