At Leidos Defense, we deliver innovative solutions across every domain, from sea floor to space by leveraging decades of expertise in areas like autonomous systems, hypersonic, and integrated air and missile defense. We empower the Department of War to achieve operational excellence and maintain a decisive advantage in an ever evolving threat landscape.

Are you ready for your next career challenge?

We are in search of a Program Recovery and Surveillance Director with significant years of development and production experience as a program manager or chief engineer on complex hardware and/or software delivery programs to join our Defense Sector (DS) business. In this role, you will assess the quality of our Defense program execution, identify emerging performance issues at the program level and work with program managers to develop and execute corrective action plans. The PRS Director believes in achieving a return-to-green in a quantifiable way even though they recognize the process can be very iterative. You love the challenges that come with working on complex programs and know how to ask inquisitive questions. Interpreting those answers through a strong intuition informed by deep experience allows you to determine whether true program performance, allowing them to be very effective at identifying return-to-green actions to turn programs around.

Lastly, you feel fully accountable for program performance and must be comfortable leading through influence as well as know how to achieve key program recovery objectives through guidance and taking action to contribute significantly to program recovery.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Work with the program team to develop corrective action plans that are timebound and directly relevant to improving program performance.
• Identify the root cause of program challenges and develop solutions that they may be called upon to help implement.
• Quickly assess a program’s areas of need and be able to supplement the team’s leadership work products to improve program performance by establishing baselines if they don’t exist, improving baselines and adhering to those baselines.
• Able to help build internal and external facing artifacts and support engagements as needed to increase customer confidence.
• When necessary, can step in to program leadership roles, which include but are not limited to, acting as the risk manager, business manager overseeing the Performance Measurement Baseline and providing program management stability during PM transitions.
• Occasionally, identify whether the program team’s talent mix is appropriate for program success. When adverse contractual communication (ex. Letter of concern, cure notice, low CPAR scores, etc) is received, you will ensure timely and effective responses.
• Support other Performance Excellence team members as needed with program startup, assist, recovery and oversight
• Mentor and train program managers. Training may include one on-one mentoring or sessions in the form of lunch & learn sessions as well as the generation and delivery of training material for new PMs.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree and 15+ years of program / project management experience, which should include cost estimating, budget management, schedule development, Earned Value Management, risk mitigation and risk monetization.
• Excellent MS Excel, Word, PowerPoint, SharePoint and PowerBI skills.
• Experience developing responses to Letters of Concern, Cure Notices, CPARs, Terminations and other contractual communications. Able to provide guidance or lead follow-up activities related to these communications and support performing client assessments.
• Experience partnering with other functional leaders (e.g. quality, contracts, supply chain, legal, finance, manufacturing) and will leverage those partnerships to assess programs and perform program recoveries.
• Prior experience successfully recovering cost and schedule overruns, as well as working on red program recoveries and achieving successful outcomes.
• Significant experience building and analyzing leading indicators for cost, schedule and technical performance to identify emerging program issues.
• Strong customer presentation, verbal and written communication skills.
• PMP certification or equivalent
• Must be a US Citizen and meet the eligibility to obtain and maintain a Top Secret Clearance (active Top Secret clearance is preferred).

If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo — because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 — and moving faster than anyone else dares.

Original Posting:

March 2, 2026

Pay Range:

Pay Range $139,100.00 - $251,450.00

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.