Aerospace Engineering Manager - Resource & People Leader

Socket.dev; Mukilteo (WA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid time off

Health Savings Account (HSA) with?

Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)

Company‑paid life and AD&D insurance

Short‑ and long‑term disability

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Karman Space & Defense is seeking an experienced engineering leader to oversee the functional group, drive resource planning across programs, and coordinate staff assignments to ensure on-time program execution.

You will partner with technical experts to maintain engineering standards, support staff development, and manage qualification tracking for new hires and transfers, ensuring scalable, high-quality output.

Qualifications

• Bachelor of Science in Engineering.
• 5+ years of engineering leadership experience, including at least 2 years in aerospace or engineering.
• Experience in resource planning, scheduling, and managing technical staff.
• Ability to manage data-driven scheduling across multiple concurrent programs.
• Experience helping staff career growth while balancing program needs.
• Ability to route design sign-off, waivers, and contested technical decisions appropriately.
• Experience translating ambiguous engineering requests into scoped work packages.

Responsibilities

• Leads consolidation of labor demand across programs to create a unified view of committed, requested, and open needs.
• Coordinates functional resource allocation, balancing workload, program priorities, and individual career development goals.
• Acts as traffic control for resource requests by sequencing work, identifying conflicts, and preventing reactive scheduling issues.
• Drives proactive hiring by identifying staffing gaps using consolidated demand data.
• Partners with technical experts to schedule, track, and maintain engineering standards and training for the functional group.
• Manages qualification tracking for new hires and transfers, ensuring progression through the qualification ladder.
• Supports programs by breaking down engineering requests into scoped, staffable work packages.
• Works with program leads to define realistic schedule and effort expectations before commitments are made.
• Identifies required skill sets for tasks and routes ambiguous technical requests to the appropriate expert.
• Provides direct people management, including goal-setting, coaching, performance reviews, onboarding support, and routine administrative oversight.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Resource planning

Scheduling

People management

Staff coaching

Education

Bachelor of Science in Engineering

Tools

Scheduling tools

Job description

Karman Space & Defense is seeking an experienced engineering leader to oversee the functional group, drive resource planning across programs, and coordinate staff assignments to ensure on-time program execution.

You will partner with technical experts to maintain engineering standards, support staff development, and manage qualification tracking for new hires and transfers, ensuring scalable, high-quality output.