Senior Strategic Program Leader – Space & Defense

Karman Space & Defense; Mukilteo (WA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid time off

HSA with company contribution

FSA

Company-paid life and AD&D insurance

Short- and long-term disability

Job summary

Karman Space & Defense is seeking a Principal Program Manager (Strategic Integration) in Mukilteo, WA. This full-time role leads enterprise aerospace programs, translating executive priorities into actionable plans and ensuring alignment across sites, functions, and product lines.

The position requires extensive multi-site leadership, strong financial acumen, and travel to sites and partners, with a salary range of $170,000–$220,000 per year.

Qualifications

• Bachelor of Science in Engineering or related field or equivalent aerospace/defense leadership experience.
• 12+ years of progressive aerospace/defense/space experience including program execution and cross-functional leadership.
• Experience leading complex multi-site integration with executive visibility.
• Extensive experience with mission-critical flight hardware programs.
• Hands-on leadership in manufacturing, NPI, industrialization, and production ramps.
• Strong technical acumen integrating engineering, manufacturing, quality, supply chain.
• Ability to operate independently in high-ambiguity environments with disciplined execution.
• Strong financial acumen: budgeting, forecasting, cost/schedule tradeoffs, risk management.
• Experience with DoD/government program environments and compliance expectations.
• Willingness to travel regularly among sites, customers, and suppliers.

Responsibilities

• Leads enterprise-scale aerospace and defense programs from planning through qualification, industrialization, production ramp, and delivery.
• Owns integrated performance across cost, schedule, technical, quality, customer, and contractual commitments; drives corrective actions when needed.
• Develops and maintains integrated master plans and schedules connecting engineering, qualification, manufacturing readiness, staffing, capital, supply chain, and site dependencies.
• Leads cross-site work transfers, ensuring strategy, readiness, configuration control, tooling, supplier transition, validation, and customer approvals.
• Drives new product introduction and development-to-production transitions, ensuring design maturity, producibility, test readiness, configuration discipline, and production readiness.
• Partners with engineering, manufacturing, and site leadership to establish executable manufacturing plans, rate ramps, constraint mitigation, capital needs, and recovery actions.
• Identifies and manages technical, manufacturing, supply-chain, cost, schedule, quality, and customer risks; establishes mitigation plans and escalates only when required.
• Leads high-consequence recovery efforts involving late hardware, quality escapes, supplier disruption, qualification challenges, or schedule compression.
• Serves as a principal interface for customers, suppliers, prime contractors, U.S. Government stakeholders, and executive leadership, communicating program status and decisions.
• Prepares and leads executive program reviews, manages contractual scope, supports proposals, and develops executable strategies for new business and growth initiatives.

Job description

Karman Space & Defense is seeking a Principal Program Manager (Strategic Integration) in Mukilteo, WA. This full-time role leads enterprise aerospace programs, translating executive priorities into actionable plans and ensuring alignment across sites, functions, and product lines.

The position requires extensive multi-site leadership, strong financial acumen, and travel to sites and partners, with a salary range of $170,000–$220,000 per year.