IT Architecture and Systems Engineering, Senior Project Engineer

The Aerospace Corporation is the trusted partner to the nation’s space programs, solving the hardest problems and providing unmatched technical expertise. As the operator of a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), we are broadly engaged across all aspects of space— delivering innovative solutions that span satellite, launch, ground, and cyber systems for defense, civil and commercial customers. When you join our team, you’ll be part of a special collection of problem solvers, thought leaders, and innovators. Join us and take your place in space.

At Aerospace, we are committed to providing an inclusive and diverse workplace for all employees to share in our common passion and aspiration – to carry out a mission much bigger than ourselves.

The Defense Systems Group (DSG) provides analysis-based decision support to senior leaders on space architectures, policy and strategy, developmental planning, system of systems engineering, and threat reduction to help shape future space missions across the national security space enterprise.

DSG is unique at Aerospace as it not only directly supports major customers, including, the United States Space Force, the Department of the Air Force, the Missile Defense Agency, U.S. Space Command, U.S. Strategic Command, Air Force Materiel Command, and senior leadership at the Pentagon, but also provides a broad range of services and support across the national space enterprise, maintaining vertical responsibilities with customers but also horizontal, matrixed responsibilities across the corporation.

The Strategic and Global Awareness (SGA) Directorate (Project West Wing) provides technical intelligence analysis and research for a broad range of national security space and intelligence community customers. SGA is a key leader in corporate efforts to help the U.S. space enterprise outpace the threats to our national space systems.

We are looking for a Senior Project Engineer to support to join the Data Management (DM) team to support Project West Wing (PWW) in establishing and improving systems engineering processes. Candidate will be responsible for architecting and managing the computing infrastructure using industry standard methodologies, along with supporting the team’s development of classified analysis and modeling and simulation capabilities. The candidate will be providing technical assessments and recommendations to the PWW leadership.  In this opportunity you will be focused on performing analyses of mission architectures to determine the necessary Information Technology (IT) capabilities and capacities to support those architectures, determining future PWW service and infrastructure developments necessary to meet future mission system and resiliency requirements, and system readiness against PWW and customer requirements. 

Work Model: The position requires 100% on-site work at the Los Angeles Air Force Base.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Collaborate with US Space Force, US Air Force, and internal Aerospace partners in guiding DM with mission partner outreach activities; assist in the understanding of requirements, matching capability/capacity of PWW services to satisfy customer requirements, and guiding projects through the systems engineering lifecycle

• Create, analyze, and reverse engineer system architectures, tool development and data processing required to ensure compliance and alignment across customer requirements and adapt as those architectures mature

• Apply specific technical knowledge in one or more PWW service domains (Local Area and Wide Area Networks, Storage, Hosting, Desktop, Servers, Cyber Security) in the comprehensive analysis of data architectures to determine the necessary PWW service and infrastructure capabilities required to support those architectures network performance while maintaining security

• Assist PWW in determining current and future technical, financial, and acquisition planning of IT service and infrastructure capabilities to support the development of next generation architectures

• Apply systems engineering expertise in performing independent assessments of system readiness and compliance and support real time operations by working with IT specialists to manage and maintain classified networks, by supporting real time operations, handling historical archives for analyst reference, and exercising creativity in designing and solving problems in a dynamic environment

• Collaborate with matrixed Aerospace engineering staff and IT project team members for specified projects and studies; act as spokesperson for the team when presenting observations, results, and recommendations

What You Need to be Successful

Minimum Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, scie