The Payload and Ground Systems organization within the Northrop Grumman Space Systems pushes the boundaries of innovation, redefines engineering capabilities, and drives advances in various sciences. Our team is chartered with providing the skills, innovative technologies to develop, design, produce and sustain optimized product lines across the sector while providing a decisive advantage to the warfighter. Come be a part of our mission.

We have an opening for a Senior Principal Chief Software Product Owner (T04) to join our Starfleet program in Manhattan Beach, CA.

The Software and Controls Department has 200+ Software Engineers, DevOps Engineers, Systems Administrators, Database Administrators, and Network Engineers from entry-level to the most senior chief engineers and architects. This engineering organization supports numerous programs within the Payload and Ground Systems organization. We have plenty of opportunity for career advancement into higher level technical roles or leadership positions. We are part of a larger local engineering organization that includes Systems Engineering and Hardware Engineering staff. This overall local engineering organization influences cross-program collaboration, professional development and training, as well as engagement and inclusion activities such as lunch-n-learns, campus events, and leadership mixers.

In this role, you will lead product strategy across multiple agile teams, ensuring alignment with customer needs/requirements and technical capabilities, informed by the Chief Engineer (CE) and Chief Architect (CA). You will have to balance strategic vision with tactical execution, driving cross-team collaboration, backlog prioritization, and managing stakeholder expectations to deliver high-impact outcomes. You will be the technical authority responsible for executing overall software engineering effort on the program and directing the execution of all software engineering activities.

Additional responsibilities include:

• Report programmatically to the Starfleet Program Manager (PM)

• Main technical POC to the customer for backlog management guidance

• Accountable for ensuring accurate and timely delivery of software

• Accountable for the deployed software products

• Supports Risk and Opportunity Management process by identifying and owning applicable risks

• Responsible for horizontal (across Starfleet teams) and vertical (across external teams) scope and schedule of software deliverables

• Manage the program Backlog and ensure non-functional requirements are captured as part of Product Definitions

• Accountable for software product planning based on Government objectives

• Work with Program and Functional Management to ensure the Software Team has qualified personnel to execute

• Responsible for the transition of the software product to Operations

• Final authority for release scope and schedule

• Ensure Mission Engineering is informed and jointly conduct technical solution analysis with CE and Mission Engineering

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree with 8 years of relevant experience; Master's degree with 6 years of relevant experience; PhD with 4 years of relevant experience; an additional 4 years of relevant experience may be considered in lieu of degree

• Active DoD TS/SCI required at time of application, and the ability to pass a Counterintelligence Polygraph (CI-Poly)

• 2 years of experience writing production level software for mission critical systems

• 3 years of experience in a software team leadership role

• Experience developing software products in an agile product development lifecycle

• Demonstrated communication skills and visionary on business, user experience, and technical sides of product development

• Demonstrated interpersonal and problem resolution skills

Preferred Qualifications:

• Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or similar

• Prior completed Counterintelligence Polygraph (CI-Poly)

• Knowledge of principles of Data Management, Event Driven Architectures, and Microservices

• Experience in a Chief Product Owner (or similar) role leading a team of Product Owners

• Experience developing software products in an agile product development lifecycle in a Scaled Agile framework with Product Owners, Scrum Masters, Release Train Engineer (or Chief Scrum Master) and multiple Agile Scrum teams

• Prior engineering or development experience with the Space Industry

• Experience sharing knowledge, mentoring, and working in a collaborative environment

• Product owner certification or any other major Agile certification

• Experience with Atlassian tool suite (Jira and Confluence)

• Ability to travel (limited, up to 10%)