Technical Program Manager

Technical Program Manager
- Space & AI Systems Company: NALEJ Corporation Department: Program Management / Mission Delivery Reports To: Chief Executive Officer, Chief Technology Officer, or designated executive

Location:
Arlington, Virginia / Hybrid, with travel to customer and partner locations as required Employment Type: Full-Time Clearance: Active Secret required; active Top Secret or TS/SCI strongly preferred Position Summary NALEJ Corporation is seeking a highly capable Technical Program Manager to lead the execution and delivery of complex programs involving space systems, satellite technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, and other advanced mission capabilities. This role will serve as the primary center of gravity for assigned programs, translating technical objectives, contractual requirements, customer priorities, and organizational commitments into executable plans and measurable outcomes. The Technical Program Manager will coordinate across engineering, product, operations, business development, customers, subcontractors, and executive leadership to ensure programs remain aligned, technically credible, financially responsible, and positioned for successful delivery. The ideal candidate combines strong program management discipline with sufficient technical fluency to engage engineers, data scientists, AI/ML practitioners, space-system specialists, government customers, and senior executives. This individual does not need to be the program’s principal engineer but must understand the technology well enough to identify risk, challenge assumptions, facilitate technical decisions, and communicate program status accurately. Experience supporting the Department of the Air Force, U.
S. Space Force, Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, or related federal mission environments is highly desirable.

Key Responsibilities
Program Execution and Delivery Lead assigned programs from initiation and planning through execution, deployment, customer acceptance, and closeout. Convert statements of work, performance work statements, technical objectives, and customer requirements into integrated program plans. Establish and maintain program schedules, milestones, deliverables, dependencies, decision points, and acceptance criteria. Drive day-to-day execution across technical and nontechnical workstreams. Ensure program commitments are delivered on schedule, within scope, within budget, and to the required level of technical and operational quality. Develop recovery plans when performance, schedule, cost, staffing, or technical issues place delivery at risk. Maintain clear accountability for actions, deliverables, decisions, and program outcomes. Lead program reviews, milestone reviews, delivery readiness reviews, and executive status briefings. Technical Program Leadership Coordinate multidisciplinary teams supporting space, satellite, AI, machine learning, neural-network, cloud, data, software, cybersecurity, and systems-integration efforts. Translate between technical teams, government customers, business leaders, and operational stakeholders. Facilitate technical tradeoff discussions involving performance, cost, schedule, integration, security, scalability, and mission impact. Understand model development and deployment lifecycles, including data preparation, training, validation, testing, integration, monitoring, and operational sustainment. Support programs involving predictive analytics, computer vision, autonomous systems, edge computing, sensor data, mission data processing, or other AI-enabled capabilities. Identify dependencies involving hardware, software, data, networks, interfaces, infrastructure, security authorization, and external mission systems. Ensure technical decisions and changes are documented and reflected in program plans, schedules, budgets, and customer communications. Partner with technical leads to establish measurable performance criteria and verify that solutions meet operational requirements. Space and Satellite Mission Support Support programs involving satellite systems, space-domain awareness, command and control, ground systems, payloads, data exploitation, communications, mission planning, or related space capabilities. Coordinate activities across space, ground, data, software, network, integration, test, and operational workstreams. Understand the relationships among satellite platforms, payloads, ground segments, user segments, mission data, and supporting digital infrastructure. Engage credibly with stakeholders familiar with Air Force, Space Force, Department of Defense, or Intelligence Community mission systems. Help align technical development with operational use cases, mission threads, government requirements, and end-user needs. Coordinate integration, testing, demonstrations, exercises, pilots, and transition-to-operations activities. Customer and Stakeholder Management Serve as a primary progra