Director of Engineering

Serve as the senior technical voice across active programs, providing oversight, guidance, and hands‑on support to ensure engineering quality and delivery confidence. Review and validate technical deliverables against customer expectations and internal quality standards. Provide direct technical leadership to programs experiencing execution risk, stabilizing delivery, transferring knowledge, and returning sustained ownership to program teams. Partner with Program Managers during hiring to evaluate and vet engineering talent. Advise on engineering approaches, architecture decisions, and technical risk across the program portfolio. Lead the engineering contribution to new business pursuits. Drive technical solutioning and win theme development for proposals and recompetes. Develop cost structures and timeline estimates for proposals. Represent the organization as technical authority in customer‑facing engagements with executive and BD/Capture leadership. Identify emerging technical trends and capability gaps relevant to target customers and markets. Raise engineering performance across the business unit through standards, mentorship, coaching, and technical guidance. Advocate training investments, certifications, tooling, and resources. Help engineers understand and advance their career trajectories. Serve as the technical career resource across the broader business unit. Create technical differentiation through engineering strategy. Shape how the organization builds and delivers software‑intensive systems. Define and champion engineering standards, practices, and tooling. Identify systemic gaps, technical debt, and delivery‑process issues and drive sustainable improvements. Represent engineering in leadership discussions on organizational design, business unit strategy, and integration priorities. Lead identification, prototyping, evaluation, and responsible operationalization of AI and emerging technologies. Establish pathways for prototypes and emerging capabilities to become secure, supportable, program‑ready solutions. Develop and drive adoption of reusable architectures, standards, tools, and technical patterns across programs. Requirements Minimum 15 years of Government / Industry experience with at least 5 years in a leadership position. Demonstrated ability building and successfully implementing a technical sales strategy and increasing company revenue. Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to present technical approaches to non‑technical executive and customer audiences. Demonstrated experience delivering software‑intensive systems in a Department of War federal government contracting environment. Experience serving as a technical authority across multiple concurrent programs or product lines, including intervening on troubled efforts and establishing a recovery path. Experience defining and enforcing engineering standards, architecture governance, or technical review processes at an organizational level. Experience developing engineering basis of estimate (BOE), labor mix, and schedule estimates supporting proposal pricing. Experience representing an organization as a technical authority in customer‑facing settings such as capability briefs, technical exchange meetings, industry days and program reviews. Demonstrated ability to lead through influence as well as direct authority, building credibility with program managers, executives, and customers who do not report to you. Proven track record of mentoring and developing engineers, with evidence of measurable career progression among those mentored. Business development experience contributing to competitive government proposals, including authorship of Technical Volumes, Solution Architecture, Win Theme Development, and Technical Approach Sections. Working depth in Distributed Systems or Service-Based Architecture, CI/CD and DevSecOps Pipelines, Cloud or Hybrid Infrastructure, Networks, Artificial Intelligence, Containerization, Automated Testing, and Secure Development Practices. Up to 20-30% travel may be required. Role based in San Diego, CA; candidates can work from home but must maintain a dedicated, professional home work environment with reliable high-speed internet. Must support proposal deadlines, program escalations, and customer engagements that may occur outside standard business hours. Must work on‑site at customer and government facilities during travel, including secure spaces. Must be a U.S. citizen. Must successfully complete a background investigation. Must be able to obtain and maintain a Secret security clearance or higher. Must be eligible to access information subject to U.S. export control regulations (ITAR/EAR). Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM). Core Competencies Demonstrates extensive experience in technical leadership, engineering standards enforcement, and proposal development within government contracting environments. Proven ability to mentor engineers, drive technical solutioning, and represent the organization as a technical authority in customer engagements. Highest-signal resume keywords Technical Leadership Engineering Standards Enforcement Proposal Development Mentorship and Career Development Technical Authority Representation ATS Optimization Keywords Hard Skills Software-Intensive Systems Delivery Technical Sales Strategy Implementation Engineering Basis of Estimate (BOE) Distributed Systems Service-Based Architecture CI/CD and DevSecOps Pipelines Cloud or Hybrid Infrastructure Artificial Intelligence Containerization Automated Testing Soft Skills Strong Written and Verbal Communication Influential Leadership Mentoring Certifications & Qualifications Secret Security Clearance U.S. Citizenship Industry Keywords Government Contracting Department of War Technical Authority Business Development Engineering Strategy Tools & Technologies Secure Development Practices Technical Review Processes Proposal Pricing Tools #J-18808-Ljbffr