Technical Program Manager

Location: Reston, VA

Clearance Requirement: Secret; TS/SCI preferred

Salary Range : $125,000-$150000+

Job Description and Responsibilities:

Data Machines is seeking a Technical Program Manager to lead advanced programs involving artificial intelligence, high performance computing, and modeling and simulation. The successful candidate will own program execution from planning through delivery, aligning scope, schedule, budget, staffing, risks, technical milestones, and customer expectations.
This role requires strong program-management discipline and technical understanding to work credibly with engineers, researchers, architects, and mission stakeholders. The Technical Program Manager must be able to understand system concepts and engineering tradeoffs, recognize technical and integration risks, ask informed questions, and translate technical progress into clear decisions and commitments.
The ideal candidate can turn complex or evolving mission needs into executable plans, coordinate multidisciplinary teams, maintain accountability across internal and external partners, and ensure that research and development efforts produce useful, testable, and operationally relevant results.

What You Will Be Doing:

Help lead technical programs involving artificial intelligence, machine learning, high performance computing, modeling and simulation, and advanced software development.

• Translate customer missions, operational needs, and contractual requirements into technical objectives, development roadmaps, work breakdown structures, schedules, budgets, staffing plans, and measurable acceptance criteria.
• Coordinate multidisciplinary teams of engineers, researchers, data scientists, operations researchers, infrastructure specialists, cybersecurity personnel, mission experts, subcontractors, and external partners.
• Demonstrate technical depth to evaluate proposed approaches, understand architecture and engineering tradeoffs, challenge assumptions constructively, and identify integration risks early.
• Oversee AI-enabled capabilities, GPU and distributed-computing environments, cloud infrastructure, data-intensive systems, and constructive, virtual, discrete-event, or campaign-level simulations.
• Establish program execution rhythms through planning sessions, technical interchange meetings, design and risk reviews, demonstrations, milestone reviews, and customer reporting.
• Manage scope, cost, schedule, technical performance, staffing, dependencies, risks, opportunities, contractual deliverables, and government-furnished resources.
• Coordinate integration across software, data, models, simulations, infrastructure, networks, sensors, and external mission systems.
• Ensure capabilities are developed and evaluated through disciplined engineering, verification and validation, benchmarking, test and evaluation, uncertainty characterization, and appropriate AI-assurance methods.
• Work with cybersecurity and DevSecOps personnel to incorporate security, compliance, software assurance, and authorization requirements into development and deployment environments.
• Communicate complex technical information clearly through program plans, technical briefings, status reports, decision materials, white papers, proposals, and customer-facing reviews.
• Support capture and proposal activities, contribute to reusable Data Machines capabilities and intellectual property, and mentor technical staff and emerging program leaders.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Active Secret security clearance and the ability to maintain it.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Operations Research, Applied Mathematics, Data Science, Physics, or another relevant technical discipline, with eight or more years of relevant experience including leadership of multidisciplinary technical programs.
• Demonstrated success managing scope, cost, schedule, staffing, dependencies, risks, contract deliverables, and customer commitments across the full program lifecycle.
• Demonstrated knowledge of AI or machine learning, high performance or GPU-accelerated computing, modeling and simulation, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, data engineering, or mission analysis, with the ability to understand architectures and technical tradeoffs.
• Experience translating ambiguous mission needs into requirements and executable plans, leading technical teams through integration, testing, demonstration, and delivery, and communicating clearly with technical and nontechnical stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility.
• Master's degree or PhD in a relevant discipline, or advanced program-management, Defense Acquisition, Agile, or Scrum certification.
• Ten or more years delivering technical capabilities for Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, Federal research, or other national-security customers, including experience with Federal acquisition, subcontract management, and government reporting.
• Program leadership in military modeling and simulation, mission engineering, wargaming, campaign analysis, autonomous systems, AI-enabled decision support, or related environments
• Practical familiarity with AI and machine-learning frameworks, GPU and HPC technologies, distributed computing, container orchestration, or secure cloud platforms, and experience transitioning research prototypes into production or operational use.
• Experience with verification and validation, test and evaluation, AI assurance, RMF, CMMC, classified or export-controlled environments, technical proposals, basis-of-estimate development, SBIR or STTR, DARPA, service laboratory, or other Federal research-and-development programs.

Clearance and Eligibility Requirements:

Candidates must be U.S. Citizens and possess at least an active Secret security clearance. An active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility is preferred. Employment is contingent upon verification and maintenance of the clearance required for assigned programs.

The position may require access to controlled, export-restricted, or classified information and may require work at Data Machines or government facilities in the National Capital Region. Limited travel may be required for customer meetings, technical reviews, demonstrations, exercises, and test events.