Director of Sustainment Engineering

Director of Sustainment Engineering# Director of Sustainment Engineering Flightwave - Torrance, CA 90503## Overview Salary Range$ - $ Salary## Description## Position Summary---The Director of Sustainment Engineering leads the engineering discipline responsible for the reliability, maintainability, availability, and total lifecycle support of fielded drone platforms. This leader owns the technical strategy for sustaining engineering, obsolescence management, reliability and failure analysis, field support, and engineering change management, bridging the gap between design engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and operations/customer support.

The role builds and leads a team of sustainment, reliability, and field support engineers and serves as the primary engineering authority for in-service issues.

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Essential Duties and Responsibilities --
- * Own the engineering strategy and roadmap for sustainment of fielded drone systems, including airframes, propulsion, avionics, payloads, and ground control systems.
* Build, lead, and mentor a multidisciplinary sustainment engineering team (reliability, field/product support, obsolescence, and configuration engineers).
* Lead root-cause and corrective action (RCCA) investigations for field failures, anomalies, and in-service issues; drive closed-loop corrective and preventive actions.
* Partner with Design Engineering to translate field data and lessons learned into design improvements, engineering change orders (ECOs), and product upgrades.
* Establish and maintain reliability, maintainability, and availability (RM&A) metrics; drive data-driven decisions on fleet health and readiness.
* Own obsolescence management and diminishing manufacturing sources (DMSMS) planning for electronic and mechanical components.
* Direct development of technical manuals, maintenance procedures, repair schemes, and training materials in support of fielded systems.
* Manage engineering support for depot-level and field-level repair, overhaul, and modification programs.
* Serve as the senior engineering point of contact for customer sustainment reviews, technical interchange meetings (TIMs), and program reviews.
* Collaborate with Supply Chain and Manufacturing on spares provisioning, repair vendor qualification, and total lifecycle cost reduction.
* Ensure sustainment engineering activities comply with applicable FAA, DoD, and customer airworthiness and configuration management requirements.
* Own the sustainment engineering budget, staffing plan, and departmental goals; report fleet health and program status to executive leadership.
* Support proposal efforts and new program capture with sustainment engineering scope, staffing, and cost estimates.

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Required Qualifications --
- * Bachelor's degree in Aerospace, Mechanical, Electrical, or a related engineering discipline (Master's preferred).
* 10+ years of engineering experience in aerospace, defense, or unmanned systems, including 5+ years in sustainment, reliability, product support, or in-service engineering.
* 3+ years of people leadership experience, managing engineers and cross-functional teams.
* Demonstrated experience with root-cause analysis methodologies (e.g., 8D, Fishbone/Ishikawa, FRACAS, FMEA).
* Working knowledge of reliability engineering principles, RM&A metrics, and lifecycle sustainment planning.
* Experience with configuration management and engineering change processes in a regulated manufacturing environment.
* Familiarity with unmanned aircraft systems, avionics, or small-UAS platforms.
* Strong communication skills with the ability to represent engineering to customers, program management, and executive leadership.
* U.S. Person status required due to ITAR---## Additional Desired Qualifications--
- * Experience supporting fielded military or government UAS/drone programs through their full lifecycle.
* Familiarity with MIL-STD reliability/maintainability standards (e.g., MIL-STD-1629A, MIL-HDBK-217) and airworthiness sustainment requirements.
* Experience standing up or scaling a sustainment/product support engineering function.
* Six Sigma / Lean or reliability engineering certification (CRE).

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Physical Requirements and Working Conditions--
- * Must be able to walk, stand, and navigate large indoor and outdoor facilities for extended periods of time.
* Ability to lift, carry, and move materials and equipment weighing up to 25 lbs on a regular basis.
* Use of personal protective equipment (PPE) may be required in designated areas or…