Senior Project Engineer

Provides advanced technical leadership, oversight, and mentorship to engineering teams while serving as a key interface with internal and external customers. Operates in a fast-paced commercial product development environment supporting a defense-focused customer base. Works within matrixed Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) and functionally aligned organizations. This position operates with minimal supervision, exercising significant independent judgment and decision-making authority related to technical scope, risk management, and engineering execution.

Essential Job Duties and Responsibilities:

• Lead the maintenance and sustainment of existing products, driving upgrades and enhancements through established engineering development processes.

• Own and oversee the development and management of project schedules in Agile environments while ensuring alignment with traditional waterfall milestones.

• Partner with Product Managers to proactively resolve complex technical issues and inform product direction.

• Drive and facilitate the identification, definition, and documentation of technical issues, risks, and dependencies across the project team.

• Ensure delivery ownership of engineering solutions that meet committed scope, schedule, and performance objectives.

• Serve as a primary technical interface with customers (internal and external) on requirements, issue resolution, planning, and status updates.

• Lead and promote cross-team collaboration using tools such as Microsoft Teams to ensure alignment and transparency.

• Oversee and monitor product development activities and progress using tools such as Jira, ensuring accurate tracking and reporting.

• Coordinate and lead collaboration efforts with internal departments, customer representatives, and third-party suppliers to drive timely issue resolution.

• Collaborate strategically with functional engineering managers to forecast, secure, and optimize resources in support of customer needs.

• Lead troubleshooting efforts with customers and engineering teams to isolate root causes and deliver timely solutions or effective workarounds.

• Ensure comprehensive documentation of all technical issues from initial identification through troubleshooting, escalation, and resolution.

• Conduct advanced analysis and resolution of complex customer issues, driving escalation paths with Product Management and Engineering as needed.

• Provide timely, professional, and technically sound communication to customers, delivering both immediate workarounds and long-term solutions to complex problems.

Minimum Job Requirements: Four-year college degree in engineering or related technical discipline plus 3+ years of related experience. Plus 3 years experience in creating, analyzing, documenting and tracking engineering development efforts. Project management experience required. Mental ability to perform engineering problem solving and analytical tasks. Must be able to work under project deadlines and be able to support Product Team in the establishment and maintenance of engineering project schedules and cost budgets. Must have strong organizational and interpersonal skills. Must communicate effectively, both verbally and in written form. Must have some leadership experience working with and building teams. Requires experience with Jira and Project Management tools (MS Project, Primavera, Smartsheet, or similar application), SAP exposure, and Confluence.