Project Manager – Defense Systems

Role Overview

• Develop, maintain, and manage project execution plans for assigned projects, including scope definition, work breakdown structure, schedule baseline, cost baseline, resource planning, communication cadence, risk management approach, quality expectations, change-control process, and closeout requirements.
• Lead cross-functional project execution through Engineering, Certification, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Quality, Operations, Finance, Customer Experience, Customer Support, and other stakeholders to ensure project work is properly planned, sequenced, resourced, monitored, and completed.
• Manage integrated project schedules, including milestone planning, dependency management, critical path awareness, schedule status, recovery planning, and timely escalation of constraints affecting project delivery.
• Monitor project cost, revenue, margin, earned value, budget performance, estimates at completion, and financial risk in coordination with Finance, Operations, and functional leaders.
• Identify unfavorable trends and lead corrective-action planning to protect project and business performance.
• Maintain project risk, issue, action, and decision logs.
• Assign owners and due dates, track mitigation and recovery actions, ensure timely closure, and escalate unresolved risks or decisions through appropriate governance channels.
• Manage project scope and change-control discipline. Identify out-of-scope requests, coordinate impact assessments, support internal and customer change decisions, and ensure approved changes are reflected in project scope, schedule, cost, delivery commitments, and stakeholder communications.
• Provide clear, timely, and accurate project status reporting to internal and external stakeholders, including performance to plan, schedule health, cost performance, risks, issues, actions, decisions needed, recovery plans, and customer impacts.
• Coordinate delivery readiness, customer acceptance, contractual or project closeout, lessons learned, transition to post-delivery support, and customer satisfaction feedback.
• Support continuous improvement of project management processes, tools, reporting methods, governance routines, and project execution standards.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree (BS/BA) in Engineering, Aviation, Business, Program Management, or a related technical discipline from an accredited institution
• seven or more years’ related aviation or aerospace industry experience and/or training; or equivalent combination of education and experience
• Minimum of seven (7) years of progressive experience in project or program management within the aerospace, aviation, defense, or closely related regulated industry, including direct responsibility for managing scope, schedule, cost, and risk on complex projects.
• Demonstrated experience leading cross-functional teams in a matrixed environment, including coordination of engineering, certification, manufacturing, and operational stakeholders through defined project lifecycle phases from planning through delivery and closeout.
• Hands-on experience developing and managing integrated project schedules, resource plans, and project baselines, including demonstrated success in meeting contractual or customer delivery commitments.
• Practical experience with aircraft modifications, MRO, STC development/ V&V qualification, product manufacturing, or similar aerospace programs strongly preferred.
• Experience operating in defense or government contracting environments, including familiarity with contractual requirements, customer reporting expectations, and compliance constraints, preferred.