The Aerospace Corporation is the trusted partner to the nation’s space programs, solving the hardest problems and providing unmatched technical expertise. As the operator of a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), we are broadly engaged across all aspects of space— delivering innovative solutions that span satellite, launch, ground, and cyber systems for defense, civil and commercial customers. When you join our team, you’ll be part of a special collection of problem solvers, thought leaders, and innovators. Join us and take your place in space.
The Digital Innovation Division (DID) is accountable for generating and executing integrated strategies, providing governance, and managing internal investments that form the foundation of Aerospace’s digital transformation.
The Digital Innovation Division is seeking Senior Project Engineers to serve as technical project leads for initiatives within the corporate AI portfolio, reporting to the Director, AI Systems and Delivery. Each lead owns one initiative end to end: its technical approach, its requirements and architecture, its cost and schedule, and the working relationships with the engineers and subject matter experts whose work the capability depends on.
We expect to fill more than one of these positions. Current and planned initiatives include an agentic platform that gives AI controlled, secure access to subject matter expert tools, databases, physics models, and document collections, spanning component engineering, modeling and simulation, verification and validation, and spectral phenomenology; enterprise agentic AI, covering orchestration, tool and data integration, and agent lifecycle management at enterprise scale; AI for software engineering, covering agentic coding assistants and developer productivity across the engineering population; and modeling, simulation, and digital engineering tooling. Depth in one of these areas matters more than breadth across all of them, and assignment is determined during hiring based on your background.
This is a technical leadership position rather than a people-management position. You will lead a project team drawn from across the corporation, hold the technical decisions for your initiative, and remain close enough to the work to judge whether what is being built is sound. You will be expected to tell us what should not be built as readily as what should.
Work Model:
This is a full-time position based 100% onsite in Colorado Springs, Co, Chantilly, Va, or El Segundo, Ca.
What Corporate Skills You’ll Bring
Ability to build trusted working relationships with engineers, subject matter experts, and senior stakeholders
Leading and delivering complex technical initiatives across classified and unclassified environments
Taking new and emerging initiatives from concept through execution when requirements are still forming
Bringing together cross functional teams, technology, and mission priorities to drive impact.
Understanding of evolving priorities, and translate mission and business needs into technical approaches and delivered capability.
What You’ll Be Doing:
Serve as the technical project lead for an assigned AI initiative, owning its technical approach, requirements, architecture, roadmap, and technical dependencies.
Lead the project team day to day, including engineers, subject matter experts, and partner organizations who do not report to you, and set the technical direction they work to.
Own cost and schedule performance for your initiative, including estimates, milestone commitments, variance, and the funding requests that support it.
Decompose a loosely defined capability goal into scoped increments that deliver something usable, and sequence them so value arrives before the full vision does.
Define what good looks like for your capability and measure it, including evaluation criteria, acceptance tests, and the performance thresholds a capability must meet before it reaches users.
Identify, track, and retire…