Principal Engineer, Systems Engineering - Process & Metrics

Role Overview

The Systems Engineering & Test Capabilities (SETC) Process and Metrics Engineer defines, improves, and sustains SETC processes and associated metrics that enable effective program execution, increase organizational visibility, and support continuous improvement. This role partners with the SETC Process Council, Engineering Leaders, program teams, and functional stakeholders to establish practical, scalable processes; develop meaningful leading indicators and performance measures; support metric data collection and analysis;

and translate insights into actionable improvement recommendations. The ideal candidate brings a strong understanding of systems engineering and integration and test execution in complex development environments, along with the ability to balance process rigor with operational usefulness and execution efficiency.

Position can be based in Tucson AZ, El Segundo CA, Goleta CA, Tewkesbury MA, McKinney TX, Huntsville AL, Aurora CO, or Atlanta GA, with hybrid or remote options available.

Active and transferable U.S. government‑issued security clearance (Secret) is required; U.S. citizenship is required. Ability to obtain interim clearance prior to start date is essential.

• Define, document, deploy, maintain, and continuously improve practical, scalable SETC execution processes, workflows, and guidance artifacts.
• Develop, document, and sustain meaningful metrics and leading indicators, including intent, operational definitions, calculation methods, data sources, business rules, reporting cadence, and usage guidance.
• Partner with engineering leaders, program teams, quality, and functional stakeholders to identify process and measurement needs aligned with organizational objectives and effective program execution.
• Support the development, implementation, and sustainment of manual, tool‑enabled, and automated data collection methods to improve metric quality, repeatability, efficiency, and reporting consistency.
• Analyze SETC execution data to identify trends, risks, performance gaps, and improvement opportunities, and translate findings into actionable recommendations.
• Architect dashboards, scorecards, summaries, and leadership briefings that provide clear, actionable insight into execution performance.
• Facilitate stakeholder working sessions to align on process expectations, metric definitions, thresholds, reporting approaches, and interpretation of results.
• Support process and metric governance by ensuring definitions are clear, auditable, and scalable, and by contributing to change control, reporting consistency, and continuous improvement across the organization.

• Knowledge of engineering lifecycle execution and how disciplined processes support cost, schedule, technical, and quality outcomes.
• Ability to develop meaningful execution metrics that are practical to collect and aligned with leadership objectives.
• Ability to translate ambiguous problems into clear process, data, and decision frameworks.
• Ability to build stakeholder alignment across engineering disciplines, program teams, and functional organizations.

• Bachelor’s Degree in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) and a minimum of 8 years of relevant experience.
• Experience as a Systems Engineering (SE) professional in a program environment.
• Experience defining, documenting, implementing, or improving engineering processes within a development environment.
• Experience developing metrics, including intent, operational definitions, data sources, business rules, calculation methods, and reporting approaches.
• Experience collecting, validating, analyzing, and interpreting performance data to support leadership insight, decision‑making, and continuous improvement.

• Experience supporting engineering process governance, command media development, or business process harmonization efforts.
• Strong written, verbal, facilitation, and presentation skills, with the ability to communicate effectively across engineering, program, and functional stakeholders.
• Experience developing or supporting dashboards, scorecards, and leadership reporting…