Principal Program Manager, Engineering Operations

Principal Engineer – Software SystemsPrincipal-level technical leadership for complex, software-intensive systemsThe RoleWe are looking for a Principal Engineer with deep systems engineering expertise to lead the design and delivery of complex software-intensive systems spanning cloud platforms, distributed systems, AI-enabled products, mission software, and large-scale operational environments.This is a senior technical leadership role for engineers who thrive in ambiguity, solve problems that span organizational and technical boundaries, and bring clarity to highly complex systems. You will partner with engineering, product, and architecture leaders to define system behavior, establish technical direction, and ensure the software we build remains scalable, resilient, and aligned with customer and mission outcomes.Success in this role requires balancing engineering rigor with product velocity. You will help teams move faster by simplifying complexity, identifying risks early, and creating architectures that allow independent teams to deliver cohesive systems.What You'll DoLead the technical design and delivery of complex, cross-domain software systems.Define system architecture, integration strategy, and technical direction across multiple engineering teams.Translate ambiguous customer, mission, and business problems into scalable technical solutions.Lead architecture trade studies and make consequential technical decisions across competing priorities.Drive system decomposition, interface definition, dependency management, and integration planning for large distributed systems.Partner with Product to validate customer needs and ensure delivered capabilities solve the right problems.Identify architectural, integration, operational, and delivery risks early and drive mitigation before they become execution problems.Shape technical direction across a product portfolio or strategic technical domain.Influence engineering organizations through technical credibility rather than reporting authority.Raise engineering quality through better architecture, engineering practices, technical standards, and mentoring of senior technical leaders.Drive capabilities from concept through integration, validation, operational readiness, and customer adoption.AI-Enabled Systems EngineeringAI-assisted development and agentic software engineering are dramatically increasing the rate at which teams can design, implement, and test software. As engineering velocity increases, strong systems engineering becomes even more important to ensure we continue building coherent, scalable, and operationally effective systems.We are looking for someone who sees AI as an opportunity to evolve how systems engineering is practiced.Accelerate system architecture, analysis, and design.Identify architectural, integration, and operational risks earlier.Scale systems engineering practices to match the speed of AI-enabled software development.Our goal: increase our ability to design the right systems as quickly as we can build them.What We're Looking ForSystems ThinkingYou naturally reason across systems, interfaces, constraints, dependencies, feedback loops, failure modes, and emergent behavior. You can understand how software, infrastructure, data, operations, and customer workflows interact, and you know how to bring structure to problems that are initially unclear.Software ArchitectureYou have significant experience designing and evolving large software systems. You understand distributed systems, APIs, cloud-native architectures, event-driven systems, data flows, scalability, resiliency, observability, security, and operational concerns. You know how to establish clear system boundaries, reduce unnecessary coupling, and create architectures that support both near-term delivery and long-term adaptability.Technical LeadershipYou influence through technical judgment and credibility. You have led major initiatives involving multiple teams and can build alignment across engineering, product, operations, and leadership without relying on organizational authority. You are comfortable making difficult tradeoffs across customer outcomes, technical risk, delivery schedule, cost, maintainability, and strategic flexibility.You have experience applying AI, automation, and agentic workflows to define and scale engineering standards, templates, playbooks, governance, and SDLC practices, with strong judgment about where human oversight remains necessary.Learning AgilityYou can enter unfamiliar technical or mission domains, identify the governing issues, develop sufficient depth to make sound decisions, and integrate the perspectives of subject-matter experts. You are able to challenge assumptions, resolve technical disagreement, and make cross-domain decisions where no single expert has the complete picture.Product and Mission OrientationYou understand that successful engineering is not complete when code is written. You remain accountable for integration, validation, operational readiness, adoption, and the real-world performance of the delivered system.Required QualificationsBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience solving complex software systems problems.Significant experience architecting and delivering large-scale, software-intensive systems.Demonstrated success leading major cross-functional or cross-domain technical initiatives.Deep understanding of modern software architecture and distributed systems.Experience leading architecture reviews, technical trade studies, and consequential design decisions.Experience defining system boundaries, interfaces, integration strategies, and validation approaches.Strong understanding of software development, integration, deployment, and operational readiness.Ability to communicate effectively with software engineers, architects, product leaders, customers, senior leaders, and executives.Demonstrated ability to lead through influence and create alignment across multiple teams.Preferred ExperienceCloud-native platforms and Kubernetes.Distributed data systems and event-driven architectures.AI-assisted software development and agentic engineering workflows.High-availability, mission-critical, or operational software platforms.Geospatial, aerospace, defense, robotics, autonomous systems, or other complex mission domains.Systems-of-systems integration.Developer platforms, platform engineering, or internal engineering infrastructure.Sovereign, on-premises, disconnected, or hybrid deployment environments.Model-based or digitally enabled systems engineering practices.What Success Looks LikeCreate clarity in highly ambiguous and complex technical environments.Establish architectures that scale across products, domains, and engineering teams.Anticipate technical and organizational risks before they become systemic constraints.Enable teams to move faster while improving technical quality and operational confidence.Ensure independent teams deliver components that function as a cohesive system.Use AI to increase the speed, consistency, and reach of systems engineering.Develop other senior technical leaders and improve how the organization makes technical decisions.Preserve long-term architectural flexibility while delivering near-term customer and mission outcomes.Pay Transparency: To support pay transparency, Vantor includes salary ranges in all U.S. job postings. Starting pay for this role will fall within the listed range and will be based on factors such as experience, qualifications, skills, location, and market conditions. Candidates who meet the minimum requirements for the role should not expect to receive compensation at the top of the range. The listed range reflects the expected pay for this position, and final offers will be determined based on each candidate's experience, expertise, and alignment with the role.The base pay for this position within Colorado is: $135,000.00 - $180,000.00 - $198,000.00 annually.For all other states, we use geographic cost of labor as an input to develop market-driven ranges for our roles, and as such, each location where we hire may have a different range.Benefits: Vantor offers a competitive total rewards package that goes beyond the standard, including a robust 401(k) with company match, mental health resources, and unique perks like student loan repayment assistance, adoption reimbursement and pet insurance to support all aspects of your life. You can find more information on our benefits at: this position is incentive eligible with a target based on contribution, company performance, and/or individual results achieved; the specific incentive plan and target amount will be determined based on the role and breadth of contributions.The application window is three days from the date the job is posted and will remain posted until a qualified candidate has been identified for hire. If the job is reposted regardless of reason, it will remain posted three days from the date the