What are the responsibilities and job description for the Engineering Manager position at Platform Aerospace?
JOB TITLE: ENGINEERING MANAGER
DEPARTMENT: ENGINEERING
REPORTS TO: CHIEF ENGINEER
CLASSIFICATION: EXEMPT
LOCATION: HOLLYWOOD, MD
STATUS: FULL TIME
JOB SUMMARY:
The Engineering Manager oversees project planning, team coordination, and technical execution to ensure engineering programs are delivered on schedule, within scope, and in alignment with company standards. This role serves as a bridge between engineering disciplines, promoting communication, documentation, and accountability across teams supporting unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and related programs and initiatives.
DUTIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Leads system development efforts from concept through production, providing technical direction, oversight, and full lifecycle ownership across all engineering domains.
- Oversees system integration, testing, and verification activities, ensuring comprehensive test coverage on representative hardware or platforms and validating performance against requirements.
- Create, maintain, and communicate detailed product development schedules, ensuring cross-functional alignment on tasks, milestones, dependencies, and delivery expectations.
- Review and approve technical documents and designs, engineering approaches, and development processes to ensure solutions meet performance, reliability, and compliance standards.
- Monitors task progress and time charging to ensure accuracy and alignment with project budgets and schedules.
- Engaging the functional team with timely flow-down of information and fostering robust collaboration within the team.
- Resolve engineering issues as they arise by working closely with all stakeholders
- Communicate with technical personnel from multiple skill areas and functions to evaluate technical information and issues impacting design, production, and support of products, services, or other deliverables
- Supports and leads department initiatives, including process improvement, workforce engagement, talent-recruitment and interviewing, training material development, technology roadmap development, cross-organization collaboration, and other duties as assigned.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:
- Bachelor's degree in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math) with 10 years of related experience, or a master’s degree with 8 years of related experience or 14 years of relevant experience in lieu of education.
- 5 years in a leadership or project coordination role, showing increasing responsibility
- Ability to obtain and maintain a Security Clearance
- Experience in aerospace, defense, unmanned systems, or similar high-precision manufacturing environments
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, able to collaborate across technical teams
- Demonstrated ability to lead UAV’s program from concept through production with the development of core systems for an air vehicle and supporting systems.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
- Previous experience with management of agile and waterfall development processes
- Familiarity with MS Project Jira, automation frameworks (Jira Automations, SharePoint Automations)
- Experience with Version Control Systems (Git, GitHub, SVN, etc..)
- Basic understanding of networking concepts such as network sockets, NAT, and the differences between routing and switching.
- Basic understanding of electrical engineering concepts of harness creation for systems integration, PCB design, or electrical circuit design.
- A technical understanding of aircraft flight controls and hands-on experience flying full sized or model aircraft
PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS:
- Ability to traverse manufacturing facility.