Principal Engineer (MDA)

About the role

MDR is seeking a highly skilled Principal Engineer to provide engineering oversight for target system payloads and countermeasure development. In this role, you will act as a trusted advisor to the program office, delivering critical assessments of prime contractor designs, technical plans, and target instrumentation layouts. You will serve as a technical anchor during major program milestones-from System Requirements through Product Acceptance-while seamlessly collaborating across multiple organizations, modeling teams, cost analysts, and schedulers to ensure items are delivered accurately and on time.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical expert on payload and countermeasure requirements development, analysis, design, qualification, and fielding.
• Review and provide assessments of prime contractor designs, plans, reports, and technical procedures.
• Evaluate target instrumentation requirements, physical layouts, component selection, and testing methodologies.
• Provide technical evaluation and engineering support during all major program milestones (including SRR, PDR, CDR, TRR, FRB, MRB, and PAR).
• Answer technical inquiries from external MDA organizations and lead multi-disciplinary Technical Interchange Meetings (TIMs).
• Provide technical assessments to the cost analysis team to ensure accurate program management budget estimates.
• Partner with the program scheduler to track delivery deadlines and proactively keep leadership advised of status.

Required qualifications

• Active DoD Secret clearance
• Master's degree in STEM and 12+ years supporting missile defense or large-scale, complex DoD programs.
• Experience managing end-to-end program lifecycles, including the development, testing, and fielding of complex systems.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment where priorities change quickly.
• Ability to handle multiple urgent tasks at once without losing focus.
• Ability to support travel request up to 20% of the time.

Desired skills

• Understanding of IR/RCS signatures for flight objects and countermeasures.
• Experience with material properties and material property measurements.
• Knowledge of real-world threat systems and how they impact target designs.
• Understanding of MDA flight test requirements and ability to apply that to the payload hardware development.
• Technical proposal development and evaluation.