YOUR MISSIONTrue Anomaly designs, sources, and manufactures spacecraft across a landscape of engineering and business systems - PLM, requirements/ALM, MBSE, and ERP - that today do not share a connected flow of product data. As Senior Manager of Digital Engineering, you will own the digital thread that changes this: the authoritative, traceable flow of product data across the entire lifecycle, and the internal platform and in-house software that make it real. Delivering this digital thread is a contractual requirement, so the mandate is concrete and the timeline is externally driven. This is a founding, hands-on leadership role - early on you will build the platform yourself and set its architecture and engineering patterns in code, while you hire and grow the software engineering team behind it, from early-career engineers to staff level, expanding as the mandate grows. As the team matures your hands-on share deliberately gives way to multiplying through others, but you stay close enough to the architecture to lead your engineers on the merits. The platform you build will give engineering, supply chain, and manufacturing one authoritative source of product data instead of manual exports and disconnected tools, with the auditability and traceability an ITAR/CUI environment demands. Integrations connect today's tools, which remain owned and administered by the teams that run them; over time, your team will build in-house systems of record wherever owning the software serves the company better than buying it.
This is a role for a builder who leads - an engineer who never stopped shipping and is energized by developing people and standing up a high-performing function from the ground up. It is not a fit for a pure people-manager who is years out of the code, nor for a senior IC who does not genuinely want to build and grow a team.
RESPONSIBILITIES Team Leadership & Development - Hire, coach, mentor, and grow a team of software engineers, from early-career to staff level.
- Set clear goals, provide regular feedback, and support career development and growth planning for direct reports.
- Foster a collaborative, high-ownership culture that thrives under fast-paced, high-stakes conditions.
- Manage on-call and support rotations so the team can keep its software reliable in production.
Hands-On Technical Contribution - Build early: personally write production code for the platform's core services, integrations, and first applications while the team is small, establishing the architecture and patterns others will extend.
- Stay hands-on as the team grows - through design and code review, prototyping hard problems, and pairing - enough to make sound technical calls and keep the trust of senior engineers.
- Deliberately hand off and multiply: shift work to the team as you hire, avoiding becoming the bottleneck or single point of failure on any critical path.
- Set and uphold the engineering bar for code quality, testing, and technical documentation by example.
Strategy & Program Ownership - Define and drive the digital thread roadmap across the platform, integrations, in-house applications, and workflow automation - including build-vs-buy decisions for core engineering and business systems, made together with the teams that own them today.
- Balance new platform capability against operational support load, enforcing the discipline to protect roadmap work.
- Run the team's delivery - planning, prioritization, and a predictable release cadence.
- Proactively identify gaps across the program and prioritize resourcing to close them.
Cross-Functional Partnership - Partner with engineering, supply chain, manufacturing, the owners of today's engineering and business systems, IT, Platform Engineering, and Cybersecurity to embed the digital thread into how products are designed, sourced, and built.
- Define clear responsibility boundaries with system owners and shared governance for integration changes, upgrades that affect integrations, access and separation-of-duties, and high-risk production change management.
- Serve as an escalation point for cross-functional questions about product-data flow and integrations.
- Communicate roadmap, delivery status, and risk to technical and executive audiences.
Technical Oversight - Provide technical guidance and review for major initiatives such as cross-system data architecture, integration patterns, traceability, and platform operations.
- Ensure observability, auditability, sync health, and data quality are built into the platform.
- Support compliance efforts (e.g., CUI/ITAR, auditability) by ensuring the team produces necessary evidence and documentation.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS - 5+ years directly managing software engineering teams, including hiring, performance management, and career development.
- 8+ years of total experience in software engineering or a related technical field, with substantial and recent time as a hands-on individual contributor - you have built production systems, not just managed people who do.
- Current coding proficiency in at least one modern language (e.g., Go, Python) - able to contribute production-quality code, prototype hard problems, and lead code review credibly, especially while the team is small.
- Track record shipping software products or platforms to production on a predictable cadence.
- Demonstrated experience building or maturing one or more of: software platforms, in-house enterprise applications or systems of record, system-integration programs, or workflow automation.
- Strong understanding of cloud and enterprise technologies, API and integration patterns, data modeling, and keeping data consistent across systems of record.
- Proven ability to translate business priorities into technical strategy and communicate it across all levels of an organization.
- Excellent analytical, problem-solving, organizational, and communication skills.
- U.S. Citizen or lawful permanent resident (U.S. Person) as required under ITAR.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS - Experience managing teams in a startup, Series C through E, or similarly high-growth environment.
- Experience standing up a new team or function from the ground up.
- Experience leading a migration from an off-the-shelf enterprise system to in-house software.
- Familiarity with PLM, MBSE, requirements/ALM, ERP, and/or manufacturing execution (MES) systems and how product data flows across engineering, supply chain, and manufacturing.
- Background in aerospace, defense, hardware, or another regulated, product-data-intensive environment.
- Experience with digital engineering / digital thread initiatives.
- Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, and cloud platforms (e.g., AWS).
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent professional experience.
COMPENSATION - Denver, Colorado Base Salary: $175,000 - $255,000
- Long Beach, California Base Salary: $185,000 - $270,000
- Equity + Benefits including Health, Dental, Vision, HRA/HSA options, PTO and paid holidays, 401K, Parental Leave
Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, location, and experience.
WORK ENVIRONMENT - This role operates in a fast-paced, high-stakes environment supporting national security space operations, where adaptability and rapid decision-making are essential.
- On-call and support rotation oversight, including occasional after-hours participation, may be required.
- High degree of autonomy and ownership over the Digital Engineering function.
- Direct access to leadership and significant opportunity to influence technical strategy.
- Travel to other company sites as needed.
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS - Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance.
- Work Location: this role is hybrid/onsite at our facilities in Denver, CO or Long Beach, CA. #LI-Onsite
- Work environment is a standard office setting, working at a desk or on a production factory floor.
- Physical demands may include frequent standing, sitting, walking, bending, and lifting or carrying items up to 20 lbs.
- This position will be open until it is successfully filled.
