NG Fellow 1 - Tracking and Discrimination

Location: United States-Arizona-Chandler

RELOCATION ASSISTANCE: Relocation assistance may be available

CLEARANCE REQUIRED FOR START: Yes

CLEARANCE TYPE: Secret

TRAVEL: Yes, 25% of the Time

Description

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon. We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.

Northrop Grumman Fellows are recognized experts who tackle the hardest technical problems and ensure we retain the hard-won insights needed to perform complex missions successfully. They define what is possible in our most critical capability areas while identifying and cultivating the people, processes, and tools required for enduring technical advantage. Fellows are deployed against our most important programs and captures, aligned to top business priorities, and advance our products and solutions to meet customers’ missions every day.

Northrop Grumman Space Systems is seeking an NG Fellow 1 – Tracking and Discrimination to support multiple critical and strategic programs. This position is in Chandler, Arizona and reports to the GNC/SW director.

The ideal candidate will set and drive strategy for a broad set of sensing, hypersonic tracking, target-state estimation, sensor fusion, target discrimination, and mission-algorithm initiatives and will be empowered to shape technical direction across radar and infrared sensor exploitation; low-latency, real-time track formation and maintenance; multi-sensor fusion; object classification; countermeasure rejection; and embedded or high-performance software implementation. The Fellow is expected to provide scientific, technical, and intellectual leadership that materially improves capture success and market-share growth in alignment with the LED long-range strategic plan.

This leader must have a strong grasp of campaign execution and networking strategy and possess the skills, drive, and judgment to successfully interface with senior leaders, chief engineers, program teams, and customer stakeholders. The role supports the full life cycle of systems engineering and verification activities associated with tracking and discrimination and is expected to mature advanced sensor-processing, target-state estimation, sensor-fusion, and threat-discrimination concepts into robust software and algorithm solutions that support missile-defense and advanced weapon-system mission objectives.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic & Technical Leadership

Serve as a sector-level technical authority for tracking, hypersonic tracking, target-state estimation, sensor fusion, and discrimination algorithms supporting missile defense, launch vehicle, interceptor, and related weapon-system applications.

Define and influence long-term technical roadmaps for radar, infrared, and multi-sensor sensing; real-time tracking and target-state estimation; Kalman-filter-based estimation; target discrimination and classification; counter-countermeasure performance; and sensor-data exploitation capabilities.

Lead the development and maturation of nonlinear and maneuver-aware estimation approaches—including Extended Kalman Filters, Unscented Kalman Filters, and Interacting Multiple Model filters—to maintain high-confidence tracks of highly dynamic targets in cluttered, contested, and operationally relevant environments.

Drive technical strategy, trades, and risk-reduction plans across the engineering lifecycle—from concept exploration through design, development, integration, verification, test, and fielding support.

Provide technical leadership on critical programs and captures, including solution development, discrimination approaches, technical differentiation, and alignment to customer mission needs.

Establish and champion best practices for maturing advanced tracking, target-state estimation, sensor-fusion, and discrimination concepts into robust software implementations, including requirements definition, performance assessment, and verification planning.

Lead trade studies on sensor-data exploitation and fusion architectures, target-state and track quality, discrimination accuracy, clutter and background rejection, countermeasure effectiveness, latency, electronic protection, and mission robustness in operationally relevant environments.

Organizational & People Leadership

Lead through influence across software, systems, GNC, sensing, mission engineering, and verification organizations, aligning technical direction with LED strategy and growth objectives.

Mentor chief engineers, IPT leads, and senior technical staff in sensor-data exploitation, multi-sensor fusion, tracking and discrimination methods, target-state estimation, Kalman filtering, classification logic, and implementation practices.

Drive adoption of rigorous engineering and verification methods that improve mission performance, solution quality, and affordability.

Engage regularly with senior leadership and customers to present technical concepts, trade studies, risks, mitigations, and recommendations in a clear and compelling manner.

Technical Skills and Core Competencies

Deep experience in tracking and discrimination algorithms, including hypersonic and highly maneuvering-target tracking, target-state estimation, track maintenance, object classification, threat discrimination, countermeasure rejection, and multi-sensor data f