Advanced Programs Lead Mission Architect

Job Summary

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager in San Diego, CA (Poway, CA) for support of multiple existing and emerging programs. The role involves defining and shaping mission concepts, operational architectures, and system-of-systems solutions for advanced unmanned aircraft programs.

Duties And Responsibilities

• Develop mission-level concepts of operations (CONOPS), use cases, and operational threads for unmanned aircraft across ISR, strike, electronic warfare, communications relay, and teaming missions.
• Translate warfighter or customer mission needs into system-level architectures and performance requirements.
• Define mission success criteria, key performance parameters (KPPs), and measures of effectiveness (MOEs).
• Lead system-of-systems architecture development across air vehicles, sensors, networks, ground control, autonomy, and logistics.
• Conduct architecture trade studies evaluating platform sizing, survivability approaches, sensor suites, comms architectures, autonomy levels, basing concepts, and mission payload mixes.
• Guide multidisciplinary design teams through mission-driven design decisions.
• Develop modeling and simulation approaches to assess mission effectiveness in contested environments.
• Evaluate alternative concepts against cost, schedule, risk, and technical maturity.
• Regular communication with Advanced Programs and ASI executive leadership.
• Provide regular technical mentorship to lower-level technical team members.
• Support the definition and decomposition of mission use cases that will inform system and segment requirements.
• Collaborate closely with chief engineers, program managers, and business development teams.
• Collaborate with Operations Analysis team to define technical performance.
• Support program objectives by ensuring technical performance, cost, schedule, and risk objectives align with defined mission architecture(s).
• Support proposal development, technical volumes, and customer engagements.
• Promote a continued strong culture of systems thinking and engineering rigor.
• Identify mission-level technical risks and maturation plans.
• Define mission-level verification strategies and demonstration roadmaps.
• Support flight test planning and operational experimentation.
• Track architecture decisions through design reviews (SRR, PDR, CDR).

Job Qualifications

• Typically requires a bachelors degree, masters degree or PhD in engineering or a related technical discipline from an accredited institution and progressive engineering experience as follows; eighteen or more years of experience with a bachelors degree, sixteen or more years of experience with a masters degree, or thirteen or more years with a PhD.
• May substitute equivalent engineering experience in lieu of education.
• Has demonstrated leadership and creativity in directing/developing the solution(s) to highly technical and complex engineering problems, and is influential in attracting and retaining engineering business as well as key professional staff.
• Prefer candidate with Military operational knowledge across multiple services (Air Force, Space force IC, Navy) to include concepts of operation and employment of airborne and space-borne systems.
• Experience with leading medium/large teams of analysts and/or engineers on complex programs.
• Must possess the ability to shape the resolution of unusually complex technical problems.
• Champion the development of new concepts and principles and serve as an expert spokesperson for those concepts or principles.
• Must possess outstanding communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills, be customer focused, and able to work on a self-initiated basis or in a team environment.
• Experience leading an engineering team or project.
• Must possess the ability to understand new concepts quickly and apply them accurately throughout an evolving environment;
• Must have excellent written, presentation, and verbal communication skills.
• Must be able to distill complex engineering topics into concise presentation materials, and present effectively to customers, internal stakeholders, and senior leadership.
• Must have a current DoD Secret clearance and a periodic reinvestigation, or an original adjudication date completed within the last 5 years.
• Able to obtain SAP access.

Preferred Qualifications

• Must be customer focused and able to work on a self-initiated basis or in a team environment and able to work extended hours and travel as required.
• Comfortable in working with a team of subject matter experts.
• Able to lead less-experienced engineers.
• Familiarity with Electronic warfare principles, application, and characterization and evaluation of EW phenomonologies within the analytical environment.
• Experience with the characterization and evaluation of red threat systems within a constructive and virtual analysis environment.
• Familiarity/experience with Operations Analysis tools such as Advanced Framework for Simulation Integration and Modeling (AFSIM) and/or System Tool Kit (STK).