Senior Manager, Government Programs

The Role

We are building a meaningful pipeline of direct government programs and teaming engagements across defense, aerospace, and adjacent agencies. When those programs land, nTop will be on the hook to deliver software and engineering services that produce real outcomes for the customer. At its core, this is a program management and delivery role. When nTop wins a government contract as a prime, a subcontractor, or a named technology partner on a teaming agreement, this person is responsible for executing it. In the near term, you will be the program manager: the person in the room, managing the customer relationship, delivering the CDRLs, and building the team around you as programs land.

This role reports directly to the CRO, and works closely with field engineering, product, and the government-facing BD team.

Required Experience

• 5+ years demonstrated experience managing U.S. government programs post-award. You have owned scope, schedule, and cost on an active government contract and been accountable to a program office or prime contractor for the outcomes.
• Direct experience hiring, onboarding, and managing technical staff. You have made hiring decisions under time pressure, evaluated engineering talent, and managed people through delivery on a real program.
• A technical background sufficient to evaluate engineering talent, assess technical risk, and engage substantively with government customers and contractor technical leads. You don’t need to be a simulation or CAD practitioner, but you need to understand what your engineers are building.
• Familiarity with U.S. government contracting vehicles and program structures: OTAs, SBIRs, IDIQs, CRADAs, fixed-price, and cost-plus. You understand the contractual environment you’re operating in.
• C clearance-eligible. Active clearance is a meaningful plus.
• Comfortable operating without established infrastructure. The processes and frameworks that will eventually govern this function don’t fully exist yet — building them, gradually and pragmatically, is part of the job.

Preferred Experience

• Experience managing programs at a software or defense-tech company where the primary deliverable was software or a digital engineering capability, not just hardware or traditional defense contracting.
• You understand what it means to deliver software-enabled services to a government customer and how to navigate that interface.
• Experience as a technical program manager on programs where the work involved computational tools, digital engineering, simulation, or advanced manufacturing either as a practitioner or as the person responsible for a team doing that work.
• A career trajectory that includes at least one experience building something from scratch, rather than inheriting something that already existed.
• Background in management consulting, particularly in a defense, aerospace, or technology practice. The combination of structured problem-solving, customer-facing communication, and comfort with ambiguity tends to translate well into this kind of role.
• Some exposure to a high-growth or scaling technology company, even if most of your experience has been in larger or more established organizations. You understand what it means to operate with limited resources and without a lot of overhead.
• Military background with a transition into program management or operational roles in the defense or technology sector.