Director, Applications Engineering

We are looking to add a Director, Applications Engineering to our team. In this role you will lead the customer-facing technical organization responsible for ensuring customers can successfully understand, integrate, operate, and deploy the company’s products and solutions. The Director oversees a team of Applications Engineers who serve as technical experts on the company’s products and act as a critical interface between customers, Product, Engineering, Business Development, and program execution.

The Director owns the Voice of the Customer within the product organization, ensuring that customer needs, integration challenges, operational experience, and product feedback are translated into actionable product requirements, roadmap priorities, documentation, tools, and improvements.

Supporting customers throughout the product lifecycle-from early product evaluation and pursuits through integration, test, deployment, and on-orbit or operational support-the Applications Engineering organization focuses on making complex communication products easy to adopt, integrate, and successfully operate.

JOB DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead Applications Engineering. Build, develop, and lead a high-performing customer-facing technical team with deep expertise in the company’s communication products, their applications, interfaces, and operation.
• Own the technical product/customer interface. Establish Applications Engineering as the primary technical interface for customers integrating and deploying standard and configurable products.
• Drive successful product adoption. Ensure customers have the technical guidance, documentation, tools, training, and support necessary to integrate, test, commission, and operate products successfully.
• Own the Voice of the Customer. Capture customer needs, integration challenges, product feedback, and operational experience and translate them into actionable input for Product and Engineering.
• Influence product strategy and roadmap. Partner with Product leadership to identify recurring customer needs, usability gaps, integration challenges, and new applications that should influence product capabilities and investment priorities.
• Develop deep product expertise. Ensure the Applications Engineering team maintains detailed knowledge of product hardware, software, interfaces, performance, configuration, and operational behavior through close engagement with product development teams and hands-on laboratory experience.
• Support pursuits and customer solution development. Partner with Communication Systems Architects, Business Development, and Product teams to apply existing and planned products to customer needs, develop product configurations, answer technical questions, and support proposals and customer demonstrations.
• Lead customer integration and technical support. Establish the approach for supporting customers through integration, test, commissioning, and operation, including rapid diagnosis and resolution of customer-reported anomalies.
• Drive product documentation and enablement. Own the strategy and quality of customer-facing technical content, including user manuals, application notes, integration guides, reference architectures, examples, training material, and other resources required for successful product adoption.
• Create scalable application solutions. Identify recurring customer integration patterns and develop reference architectures, tools, procedures, and standard solutions that reduce engineering effort and make products easier to deploy across customers and missions.
• Close the loop with Engineering. Establish effective mechanisms for escalating product issues, communicating customer priorities, supporting root-cause resolution, and ensuring lessons from customer deployments improve future product releases.
• Partner across the product lifecycle. Work closely with Conceptual Design, Product Development & Assurance, Product Management, Engineering, Business Development, and execution teams to maintain continuity from customer need through solution development, product selection, program execution, integration, and operation.
• Develop applications engineering talent. Build a team capable of combining strong technical depth with customer engagement, systems thinking, troubleshooting, and clear technical communication.

JOB REQUIREMENTS AND MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical field with 11-15 years of related experience, Master's degree in a related field with 9-12 years of related experience, or PhD in a related field with 7-10 years of related experience in applications engineering, systems engineering, product engineering, customer integration, technical support, or a related engineering discipline.
• 5+ years of leadership or management experience leading applications engineering, systems engineering, product engineering, or related technical professionals and managers.
• Extensive experience directing customer integration and deployment activities involving complex hardware and software systems.
• Expertise in resolving significant system integration, product performance, and technical challenges through direct customer engagement and cross-functional engineering coordination.
• Demonstrated experience translating customer requirements, operational feedback, and field experience into product requirements, technical documentation, application tools, and product improvement.