Principal Program Manager

Principal Program Manager

STR's Intelligence Division researches, develops, and deploys advanced analytics and machine learning-based solutions to solve challenging problems in support of national security and the intelligence community. Our team consists of passionate and motivated individuals with advanced degrees in engineering, computer science, mathematics, and data science, who are seeking opportunities to use their technical knowledge and creativity to tackle some of the hardest problems that our customers face. Our projects span multiple different data modalities and incorporate advanced algorithms, deep learning, and statistical techniques to uncover patterns in social media, structured and unstructured text, time series, geospatial, and imagery data, and must operate under challenging constraints not typically found in the commercial world. The tools and technologies we develop have real world impact and are used by analysts to extract and enrich intelligence information around the globe.

We are looking for a leader who is passionate about collaborating with high-performance teams to solve unique national security challenges with novel technologies. A Principal Program Manager is accountable for the ultimate success of the product and is responsible for ensuring that what is developed and delivered to customers is operationally valuable. In this role, a Program Manager will be expected to demonstrate: 1) expertise on the customer's challenges, desires, workflows, and acquisition processes, 2) expertise on the product and the leveraged technologies, 3) understanding of STR's business and the role the product plays, and 4) deep knowledge of the market and industry, including trends, customer expectations and competition. The Program Management role requires creativity and strong intellectual curiosity in applying new technologies to solve customer problems. Because the technologies we bring to market often represent the state of the art and may involve process changes, additional key skills for the Program Manager include persistence and strong communication to drive cross-functional collaboration. Finally, as the Program Manager is a key role within the Intelligence Division, they will play an important part in a variety of additional functions including business strategy, business development, and growing the team.

This role will take advantage of STR's flexible, hybrid environment – when the work does not require use of STR's facilities, you are welcome to work remotely.

What you will do:

• Join an active, distributed team, working across a growing set of projects
• Work ~75% time at the customer site in Washington, DC, and the rest of the time at STR's Arlington, VA office (with flexibility to work from home): the split work location is designed to support strong engagement with our customers, STR's on-site team members, and STR's technical and business operations teams in Arlington, VA and Woburn, MA
• Engage directly with end users, build strong customer relationships, and constantly seek to apply new technology to solve real customer problems
• Empower the designers, engineers, and scientists to act with a meaningful degree of autonomy by developing and clearly communicating a unifying product vision and strategy – both STR employees and our subcontractors
• Manage STR and subcontractor personnel at the customer site
• Understand all stakeholders, the constraints in which those stakeholders operate, and create customer solutions that work within the constraints of the business
• Foster team collaboration to embrace the give and take between software functionality, user experience, and enabling technology
• Continuously improve the product discovery process to establish compelling value and identify key risks
• Hold high-integrity commitments to deliver viable solutions that work for the customer and business
• Work in a fast-paced environment to enable successful contract execution, including financial planning and control, contract coordination, and subcontract coordination (in partnership with STR's Business Operations teams)

Who you are:

• Active Top Secret security clearance (including willingness to undergo polygraph process), for which U.S. citizenship is needed by U.S. Government
• US Defense or Intelligence Community expert with operational knowledge
• Experience in guiding technical projects to translate mission needs into production software while identifying and tracking product risk
• Aptitude for collaborating with stakeholders across a wide range of technical comfort levels
• Team player and team leader, with proven ability to motivate cross functional teams to perform at their best
• Comfortable working with data and complex analysis: both business operations tools (e.g., Excel) and our custom analytics and intelligence tools
• Demonstrated success decomposing a problem into addressable component parts
• Entrepreneurial spirit and eager to engage in technical marketing and business development

Even Better:

• Master's degree in a technical field or MBA
• Experience in managing a DevOps or Agile environment, preferably related to large data/analytics. Able to manage programs using SAFe.
• Prior military experience with emphasis on intelligence and delivering analytic products
• Active TS/SCI security clearance with CI poly
• 2+ years experience in product program management / product ownership for an operational production software implementation, for projects 5-50 FTE
• Deep enough understanding of full-stack software technologies to consider capabilities and limitations
• Knowledge of software development best practices and tools
• Experience writing technical proposals, or leading proposal efforts
• Working knowledge of DoD or IC mission and acquisition processes