Chief Software Product Owner Level 4

About our local organization: You'll be joining our Aurora Software and Controls Department which has 200+ Software Engineers, DevOps Engineers, Systems Administrators, Database Administrators, and Network Engineers from entry-level to the most senior chief engineers and architects. This engineering organization supports numerous programs within the Payload and Ground Systems organization. We have plenty of opportunity for career advancement into higher level technical roles or leadership positions. We are part of a larger local engineering organization that includes Systems Engineering and Hardware Engineering staff. This overall local engineering organization influences cross-program collaboration, professional development and training, as well as engagement and inclusion activities such as lunch-n-learns, campus events, and leadership mixers.
About the program: You'll be joining an existing on-contract classified portfolio called Swordfish and one of its program's we call "Starfleet" that is supporting a critical national security mission that is both in major development and operations. The program team is based in Aurora, CO yet has distributed team members located at several other Northrop Grumman sites across the US as well as at collaborating partner company sites. Some of the program's baseline and environments are unclassified allowing some software development outside of a secure facility. The team located in Aurora is roughly 25 staff primarily composed of software developers organized into agile scrum teams that primarily work in two large rooms with cubicle like individual spaces (yet a few have dedicated offices) then has a high side integration, test, and deployment lab. The program's culture is agile, fast-paced, high performing, proactive, collaborative, and welcoming of new ideas, technologies, and tools that could benefit the mission or help the team be more productive or produce a higher quality product.
About the job: As a Software Chief Product Owner, you'd be joining the Starfleet program. The Chief Product Owner (CPO) leads product strategy across multiple agile teams, ensuring alignment with customer needs/requirements and technical capabilities, informed by the Chief Engineer (CE) and Chief Architect (CA). The CPO will have to balance strategic vision with tactical execution, driving cross-team collaboration, backlog prioritization, and managing stakeholder expectations to deliver high-impact outcomes. The CPO is the technical authority responsible for executing overall software engineering effort on the program and directing the execution of all software engineering activities. The Starfleet program's CPO has the following roles and responsibilities.

Reports programmatically to the Starfleet Program Manager (PM)
Main technical POC to the customer for backlog management guidance
Accountable for ensuring accurate and timely delivery of software
Accountable for the deployed software products
Supports Risk and Opportunity Management process by identifying and owning applicable risks
Responsible for horizontal (across Starfleet teams) and vertical (across external teams) scope and schedule of software deliverables
Manages the program Backlog and ensure non-functional requirements are captured as part of Product Definitions
Accountable for software product planning based on Government objectives
Work with Program and Functional Management to ensure the Software Team has qualified personnel to execute
Responsible for the transition of the software product to Operations
Final authority for release scope and schedule
Ensure Mission Engineering is informed and jointly conduct technical solution analysis with CE and Mission Engineering
Basic Qualifications:

Must have an active U.S. Government DoD Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) security clearance at time of application.

Ability to pass a Counterintelligence Polygraph (CI-Poly) (not required to start)

Bachelor's degree in science with 8+ years of relative experience; 6+ years of relative experience with a Master's; or 4 additional years of relative experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.

At least 2 years of experience writing production level software for mission critical systems

At least 3 years of experience in a software team leadership role

Experience developing software products in an agile product development lifecycle

Demonstrated communication skills and visionary on business, user experience, and technical sides of product development.

Demonstrated interpersonal and problem resolution skills

Preferred Qualifications:

It is preferred that a given candidate have some combination of the following attributes:

Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or similar

Prior completed Counterintelligence Polygraph (CI-Poly)

Knowledge of principles of Data Management, Event Driven Architectures, and Microservices

Experience in a Chief Product Owner (or similar) role leading a team of Product Owners

Experience developing software products in an agile product development lifecycle in a Scaled Agile framework with Product Owners, Scrum Masters, Release Train Engineer (or Chief Scrum Master) and multiple Agile Scrum teams

Prior engineering or development experience with the Space Industry

Experience sharing knowledge, mentoring, and working in a collaborative environment

Product owner certification or any other major Agile certification

Experience with Atlassian tool suite (Jira and Confluence)

* Ability to travel (limited, up to 10%)

Primary Level Salary Range: $137,400.00 - $206,000.00The above salary range represents a general guideline; however, Northrop Grumman considers a number of factors when determining base salary offers such as the scope and responsibilities of the position and the candidate's experience, education, skills and current market conditions.Depending on the position, employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay. Annual bonuses are designed to reward individual contributions as well as allow employees to share in company results. Employees in Vice President or Director positions may be eligible for Long Term Incentives. In addition, Northrop Grumman provides a variety of benefits including health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance, savings plan, Company paid holidays and paid time off (PTO) for vacation and/or personal business.The application period for the job is estimated to be 20 days from the job posting date. However, this timeline may be shortened or extended depending on business needs and the availability of qualified candidates.Northrop Grumman is an Equal Opportunity Employer, making decisions without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, or any other protected class. For our complete EEO and pay transparency statement, please visit http://www.northropgrumman.com/EEO. U.S. Citizenship is required for all positions with a government clearance and certain other restricted positions.

Client-provided location(s): Aurora, CO

Job ID: NorthropGrumman-R10204673

Employment Type: OTHER

Posted: 2025-08-21T20:10:07