Chief Engineer

Work Arrangement

Hybrid position located in Northern Virginia, Huntsville, AL, or Tampa, FL.

Job Overview

The Chief Engineer combines technical expertise, strategic vision, and leadership to oversee all engineering activities within the assigned product portfolio, ensuring that the portfolio engineering efforts achieve the organizational objectives. They own technical performance and are key stakeholders in cost and schedule outcomes for all technical program content. Serving as the primary technical point of contact for customers, functional teams, and leadership, the Chief Engineer ensures the program’s technical baseline is stable, applies common engineering standards, and implements effective change control.

They drive design decisions to ensure contract integrity and quality, establish team workflows, align priorities, and resolve technical conflicts. Collaborating with the R&D team, the Chief Engineer integrates new capabilities into portfolio products and drives innovation of new products while supervising engineering teams to ensure strategic alignment and high-quality execution of development and sustainment activities.

This role also involves managing staffing, resource allocation, and partnerships with Engineering Services to secure tools and support. Additionally, the Chief Engineer fosters the professional growth of the engineering team through mentoring, skill evaluations, and tailored development plans.

Essential Functions

• Technical Leadership
  
  
  
  • Own the overall system architecture and technical roadmap for the new UAS platform ensuring products meet quality, performance, and safety standards
  
  
  • Define and maintain platform level requirements, interfaces and design trade studies
  
  
  • Ensure technical coherence across air vehicle, propulsion, avionics, autonomy, comms, payloads and ground systems
  
  
  • Establish design standards, design reviews, and engineering decision frameworks
  
  
  • Collaborate with the other Tactical Systems and Navigation and Autonomy Center (NAC) teams to identify and integrate emerging technologies into existing products as well as drive development of new products to support portfolio growth
  
  
  • Lead platform development from concept through prototype, test, qualification, and production transition
  
  
  • Drive schedule, technical risk reduction, and performance trade-offs
  
  
  
  


• Team Leadership and Development
  
  
  
  • Supervise Engineering Teams: Manage, mentor, and develop engineering staff, fostering professional growth and technical expertise.
  
  
  • Develop Talent: Assess skills and create tailored growth plans, incorporating training, rotational assignments, and continuing education.
  
  
  
  


• Resource and Project Management
  
  
  
  • Optimize Resources: Assess engineering staffing need sand allocate resources across larger matrixed engineering team within Tactical Systems to balance workloads and meet objectives.
  
  
  • Ensure Project Readiness: Coordinate with cross-functional teams to maintain timelines, budgets, and risk management strategies for engineering activities.
  
  
  
  


• Governance and Compliance
  
  
  
  • Maintain Regulatory Compliance: Ensure all engineering activities meet applicable industry and regulatory standards.
  
  
  • Document Key Decisions: Oversee the documentation of technical decisions, changes, and processes for traceability and future reference.
  
  
  
  


• Strategic Planning
  
  
  
  • Align engineering efforts with portfolio and business objectives and contribute to strategic planning for future product development and sustainment.
  
  
  
  


• Perform other duties as assigned

Standard Essential Functions

• Regular and reliable attendance on a full time basis [or in accordance with posted schedule].


• Responsible for exhibiting professional behavior with both internal and external business associates that reflects positively on the company and is consistent with the company's policies and practices.


• Embodies AEVEX’s cultural values and aligns daily actions with department goals and company culture.

Qualifications            

• Strong understanding of defense trends, technologies, and best practices


• Excellent critical thinking skills


• Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills to effectively collaborate with diverse stakeholders and build consensus


• Proven experience in leading technical teams and fostering a culture of innovation


• Expertise in aerospace engineering and technology development.


• Strong communication and collaboration skills to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholders.


• Familiarity with regulatory requirements in the UxS industry and DoD.


• Understanding of diverse UxS platforms and their applications.


• Ability to identify and leverage emerging technologies for UxS systems.

Education / Certifications

• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science or Engineering.


• Master's degree preferred

Experience

• Minimum of 10 years of relevant experience with progressive technical experience in engineering roles, with a proven track record of technical design and development


• Unmanned Systems(UxS) experience is desired.

Physical Requirements

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties the employee is:

• Frequently required to sit, and to reach to use computers and other office equipment

For the purpose of this summary, occasionally is used to represent up to 1/3 of the time given to the work day, frequently represents 1/3 to 2/3 of the time and constantly represents 2/3 or more of the time.

Security Clearance

• Ability to obtain/maintain a Secret DoD clearance, U.S. Citizenship required.

About AEVEX 

AEVEX, headquartered in Solana Beach, California, supports the U.S. national security mission and partner nation needs around the world by providing full-spectrum aviation, remote sensing, and analysis solutions. The company's capabilities include custom design and engineering; rapid prototyping; sensor integration and sustainment; aircraft modification and certification; flight test instrumentation and support; mission operations service; advanced intelligence data processing, exploitation, and dissemination solutions; and tailored hardware and software mission-system tools. AEVEX uses agile and customized approaches to rapidly define, develop, and deliver specialized solutions for airborne special mission needs for the U.S. Government, partner nations, and commercial businesses. AEVEX has major offices in California, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.

AEVEX provides a full suite of comprehensive benefits, including a 401(k)-retirement plan, comprehensive Medical, Dental, Vision, Disability and Life insurance group coverage with a portion of the premiums paid by the company, professional development funds, and an Employee Assistance Plan (EAP) with counseling, legal help, child and elder care support, among other benefits for qualified employees.

Equal Employment Opportunity:

AEVEX is an Equal Opportunity employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, religious creed, color, sex (including pregnancy, breast feeding and related medical conditions), gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, military and veteran status, marital status, age, protected medical condition, genetic information, physical disability, mental disability, or any other protected status in accordance with all applicable federal, state and local laws.