Project Chief Engineer- Active Secret (Onsite)

Shape the Future of the Connected Battlespace 

Applied Research & Technology (ART) is seeking an experienced Project Chief Engineer to lead complex integration, experimentation, and field demonstration activities supporting military customers and advanced mission-critical systems. In this highly visible role, you’ll provide hands-on technical leadership across customer engagements, field events, secure environments, and multi-domain integration efforts, helping transform emerging technologies into operational capabilities. 

As a key member of the JADC2 Experimentation, Demonstration & Integration (JEDI) Team, you’ll help customers envision the future battlespace through demonstrations and experimentation that create demand and drive early advantage for Connected Battlespace implementation. You’ll work at the forefront of emerging technology to: 

• Identify, prioritize, and rapidly mature emerging capabilities that address evolving mission needs.  

• Influence key customer requirements and validate innovative solutions through experimentation, integration, and real-world demonstrations.  

• Create new opportunities and drive early competitive advantage, increasing the probability of win (Pwin) for Collins technical proposals.  

This is an opportunity to work at the intersection of technology, mission, and customer need, influencing what comes next while seeing your technical leadership translate into real-world mission capabilities. 

 
What You Will Do 

• Guide Technical Execution: Lead cross-discipline technical execution across engineering domains, ensuring that all elements work together as a cohesive solution.  

• Operational Planning and Project Controls: Design, communicate, and implement JEDI PMT technical plans, including engineering work breakdowns, schedules, and cost estimates. Lead the execution of project controls, monitoring progress against plan and ensuring that technical work is aligned with program cost, schedule, and quality targets.  

• Proposals, Business Plans, and Contract Support: Coordinate technical inputs to proposals, business plans, work statements, specifications, budgets, and contractual terms for their product or customer area. Ensure that commitments are technically sound, feasible, and consistent with family architectures and standards.  

• Design Direction, Development, and Execution: Guides team to build design concepts, criteria, and engineering direction for product research, development, integration, and test within their scope. Ensure that validation and certification/qualification activities are planned and executed to meet customer and regulatory requirements.  

• Issue Resolution and Resource Coordination: Monitor technical and operational progress, identify deviations from plan, and drive timely resolution of technical and execution issues to minimize delays. Work with Engineering Resource Management and functional leaders to secure and coordinate the resources necessary to meet commitments.  

• Stakeholder Engagement: Serve as the technical interface for their product/segment/customer scope with General Management, Program Management, customers, and suppliers, ensuring alignment between technical decisions, business objectives, and contractual obligations. 

• Ability and willingness to travel up to 25%, including to customer sites, test ranges, and field demonstration locations.