Chief Engineer – Propulsion Tanks - Level 5

This is a highly visible, hands-on role for a technical leader who wants to own a product line end-to-end—stabilizing performance, lifting team capability, and shaping the technology roadmap. You will have direct influence with customers, site leadership, and business leadership across the company, working on hardware that directly affects mission success. 

The ideal candidate is a seasoned technical leader with deep propulsion tank experience, strong metallurgy and manufacturing expertise, and a proven track record of building teams, navigating challenges, and positively influencing culture in demanding environments. We value diverse perspectives and inclusive leadership, and we’re looking for a chief engineer who can bring out the best in a broad range of engineers and partners. 

What You’ll Get to Do 

• Serve as Chief Engineer for the Commerce Propulsion Tank Product Line, owning the technical baseline and guiding design, development, integration, test, and production support. 

• Act as the primary technical interface to customers, Commerce site leadership, and key functional and business partners. 

• Lead root cause and corrective action (RCCA) and nonconformance resolution, driving closure of complex technical issues that impact performance, yield, and schedule. 

• Apply deep expertise in metallurgy and materials, GD&T, precision machining, and production tooling to improve producibility and manufacturing robustness. 

• Partner closely with Operations, Manufacturing Engineering, Tooling, and Quality to address manufacturability, variability, and cost drivers. 

• Build and mentor a high performing engineering team in a small, growing organization: coach engineers, set clear technical standards, and raise the level of technical rigor. 

• Take on a high impact build and transform charter: strengthen a small team, improve technical discipline, and help shape the culture of the Commerce propulsion tank organization. 

• Champion a positive, inclusive culture by modeling Northrop Grumman’s leadership behaviors: setting a vision, taking ownership, leading with courage, responding with resilience, and acting with speed. 

• Maintain strong awareness of the propulsion tank market and architectures, including PMD designs, COPV tanks, diaphragm tanks, and titanium forging constraints. 

• Support new business and proposals with technical strategy, risk assessment, and requirements compliance, clearly articulating our technical value to customers. 

• Lead development of technical roadmaps, including evaluating emerging technologies such as additive manufacturing and defining transitions away from forging constrained approaches to meet higher demand under tighter timelines. 

• Work closely with site leadership, Operating Unit and Business Unit leaders, and enterprise functional leadership, providing a strong platform for future technical and organizational leadership opportunities.