Principle MLE, Chief Architect - Maritime Domain Awareness Platform

As the Chief-Architect and Product owner of the Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) platform, you will be the principal engineer and technical leader of a cross-functional team to deliver value to Saab. Inc's dual-use MDA solutions. This role will focus primarily on building a cutting edge, end-to-end maritime domain awareness platform aligned with both national security and commercial MDA objectives. The fully connected MDA platform will leverage information from multi-domain sensors from seabed to space to create domain insights and awareness for enabling actionable intelligence and continuous closed loop learning. As part of this effort, you will build and lead a world-class team of technical and tactical experts through targeted hiring of ML/software engineers and data scientists. You will have both high-level and direct hands-on influence on Saab Inc.'s MDA business/product strategy, ensuring that our capabilities are being conveyed as both cutting edge yet realizable. Translating customer needs into development priorities is important: this means supporting the Customer Success, Business Development, and Sales teams closely, working hand-in-hand with Operations and Engineering to deliver results.

In this role, you will be leading initiatives to support Saab, Inc.'s work in developing "best in class" Digital Ocean solutions. You will lead product development conversations, using customer insights as a guide to align our efforts with scalable revenue opportunities. To be successful in this role, you are a leader, a team player, and mission focused. You have a research-to-product mindset. You will be interacting with everyone on the team and will be cross-functional. You are empathetic, curious and incredibly detail-oriented and organized. You read documentation thoroughly and are comfortable asking questions and seeking help. You are an independent worker and critical thinker.

The role is an on-site (hybrid) role working with real hardware and systems at an office on the water in San Diego, CA. Travel is required to support customer engagements and demonstrations & deployments at approximately 10%.

Role Responsibilities:

• Product strategy and IC. Product development: develop and articulate a clear product strategy for Saab's Digital Ocean product line, including build vs buy decisions. Design and build Saab, Inc.'s full stack maritime domain awareness capability with a secure, end-to-end, enterprise scale data analytics platform that can ingest, store, transform and analyze streaming and batch data from multi-domain sensors from seabed to space. A first functional prototype is expected in no more than 6 months from hire.

• Team Leadership: Grow team, lead, supervise, and inspire a high performing team of ML/software engineers and data scientists, fostering a culture of collaboration driven by a "research to product" mindset. Have the pulse of the team, provide mentorship and guidance to team and maintain team synchronicity.

• Cross functional collaboration: Collaborate with cross functional teams to ensure successful development, launch and CI/CD of the product line/s. Work closely with stakeholders to incorporate feedback and customer needs into product strategy and roadmap decisions. Work with partners across industry, academia, and government to deliver, grow and integrate novel Digital Ocean capabilities.

• Product Roadmap and Lifecycle Management: Develop and grow a detailed roadmap, detailing key features, updates and release cycles. Ensure projects milestones and end-user requirements are met. Anticipate and provide early guidance on project bottlenecks and provide resolutions. Identify up-sell, cross-sell, and resell opportunities, especially as new capabilities roll out.

• Project tracking and reporting: Develop plans and execute with the team by monitoring progress, budget and resources and providing on-going visibility on product status against key milestones, decisions, dependencies, issues and risks etc. to all stakeholders.

• Market Analysis and Competitive Intelligence: Conduct competitive analysis and support technical communications strategies with Saab's marketing team. Stay informed and maintain alignment with industry trends, market dynamics and competitive landscape. Perform project planning including staffing, cost accounting and risk management for proposal development.

• Stakeholder engagement: Be aware of evolving customer needs, market pressures and emergent technologies and continuously refresh product to maintain alignment and best in class status. Drive initiatives to enhance customer satisfaction and retention through innovative market differentiating product updates. Build scalable processes around customer success, for example, the means to provide better customer service, receive feedback, and look for opportunities to accelerate execution. Socialize key milestones with industry, academia, and government through conference presentations, technical paper publications, and media relations.

Compensation Range: $194,300-$257,500

The compensation range provided is a general guideline. When extending an offer, Saab, Inc. considers factors including (but not limited to) the role and associated responsibilities, location, and market and business considerations, as well as the candidate's work experience, key skills, and education/training.

Required Skills/Experience:

• B.S. in Computer Science, data science, engineering or related analytical discipline with at least 10 years work experience or MS in Computer Science, data science, engineering or related analytical discipline with at least 7 years work experience. Work experience must be related to full-stack platform engineering.

• Demonstrated hands-on experience in building enterprise scale, end-to-end data analytics platforms with ownership of end-to-end program success and customer/user expectations.

• Demonstrated experience (string familiarity) with layers 1- 7 of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model or similar frameworks for IoT systems.

• Demonstrated experience developing and working/managing cloud native (AWS, GCP, Azure etc) solutions.

• Comfortable developing and working in both server and serverless environments.

• Demonstrated experience in databases (structured, unstructured, distributed) and DBMS's and specifically, strong experience with spatiotemporal databases and GIS data will be highly valued.

• Strong proficiency in one or more backend RDMS database tools such as MySQL, PostgresSQL etc.

• Demonstrated understanding of data modeling and data structures.

• Strong proficiency in one or more back-end programming languages such as Python, Java, C++, NodeJS, etc.

• Demonstrated experience with ETL tools, orchestration solutions, and data warehouses in one or more of Redshift, Snowflake, Databricks etc.

• Demonstrated knowledge of data pipeline tool chains and processes such as Dev-Sec-Ops, ML-Ops, CI/CD, Data observability and setting up monitoring and alerting solutions.

• Experience building visualization platforms for C2 use cases, including user experience (Ux) engineering and human factors engineering design considerations.

• Proficiency in Web Hosting and Version Control platforms

• Experience with and/or understanding of one or more Data Analytics/visualization frameworks and associated programming languages used in building enterprise scale platforms.

• Proficiency with Linux, Docker, and Kubernetes.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with an automation first mindset.

• Experience with mission analysis, customization, and development of product, managing project risk, deployment of product, user training program management, customer support, and product sustainment and maintenance.

  • Strong interpersonal skills and an ability to build effective working relationships is a must, especially across government and industry.

  • Excellent oral and written communication skills with a proven ability to communicate well with peers and different levels of management and the customer.

  • Proven leader who motivates, inspires, and teaches others. Strong work ethic and self-motivate and pro-active in seeking out the best solution/s.

  • Must exhibit leadership for executing practical application of engineering processes on a development program and maintaining engineering rigor while balancing cost, technical, and schedule.

  • Strong technical leadership with a research-to-product mindset, including experience leading teams of senior researchers and engineers.

  • Ability to operate as an engineering point of contact for senior leadership and customers.

  • Must hold or be able to obtain U.S. DoD SECRET security clearance and be a U.S. Citizen.

Desired Skills/Experience:

• PhD in Computer Science, data science, engineering or related analytical discipline with at least 5 years work experience.

• Experience as a chief architect and project/program manager for greenfield projects from concept to delivery. Experience with end-to-end data analytics platforms is highly desirable including software/hardware/cloud-integration, prototype demonstrations, and product deployments.

• Experience with full-stack development including state of the art front-end visualization and dynamic UI.

• Experience with implement ing infrastructure as code and GitOps solutions.

• Understanding of the MDA domain and its product lines for commercial and/or defense applications is a strong plus.

  • Familiarity with new DB architectures such as Graph DB's, Data Mesh, Data Fabric etc.

  • Familiarity with ML/DL libraries including, PyTorch, Scikitlearn, Tensorflow, Transformers etc.

  • Familiarity/experience in aggregation, processing, and spatio-temporal analysis of geospatial data from various sources, including but not limited to, AIS, EO/IR, SAR, RADAR, Satellite Imagery, Acoustic sensing etc.

  • Proficiency in geospatial software such as ArcGIS, QGIS, GDAL.

  • Proficiency in JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and React as a modern front-end framework.

  • Direct experience with maritime systems and naval operations with US DoD contractors is desirable.

  • Experience writing winning proposals against Government RFP's including DoD, NSF, ONR, AFRL etc.

  • Interest in predictive analytics, data fusion, big data processing, and/or edge processing and experience building enterprise scale cloud-based analytics platforms with GIS data analytics and visualization.

  • Direct experience and comfort working with the U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, NOAA, or other MDA customers, DoD contracting experience preferred.

  • Military, DoD, or experience as an MDA user in other industries, especially with unmanned systems.

Citizenship Requirements:

Must be a U.S. citizen. Applicants selected may be subject to a government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information.

Drug-Free Workplaces:

Saab is a federal government contractor and adheres to policies and programs necessary for sustaining drug-free workplaces. As a condition of employment, candidates will be required to pass a pre-employment drug screen.

Saab provides an excellent working environment offering professional growth opportunities, competitive wages, work-life balance, business-casual atmosphere and comprehensive benefits:

• Medical, vision and dental insurance for employees and dependents

• Paid time off including: minimum of 3 weeks vacation, 5 floating holidays, 8 designated holidays, parental leave, personal illness, bereavement, jury duty, long-term and short-term disability

• 401(k) with immediate vesting on employer match

• Tuition assistance

• Student loan assistance

• Wellness account, Care.com subscription and employee assistance programs

• Employee stock purchase program with employer match

Saab is a leading defense and security company with an enduring mission, to help nations keep their people and society safe. Empowered by its 19,000 talented people, Saab constantly pushes the boundaries of technology to create a safer, more sustainable and more equitable world. In the U.S., Saab delivers advanced technology and systems, supporting the U.S. Armed Forces and the Federal Aviation Administration, as well as international and commercial partners. Headquartered in Syracuse, New York, the company has business units and local employees in eight U.S. locations.

Saab is a company where we see diversity as an asset and offer unlimited opportunities for advancing in your career. We are also a company that respects each person's needs and encourage employees to lead a balanced, rewarding life beyond work. Saab values diversity and is an Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action employer. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply and will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity, age, veteran, disability status, or any other federal, state, or locally protected category.