Strategy Execution Lead

Leidos is seeking an experienced Strategy Execution Lead to coordinate integrated planning, team execution, and performance reporting in support of the United States Air Force Integrated Defensive Cyber Systems (IDCS) mission.

This role works closely with government leadership, engineering teams, operational stakeholders, and industry partners to translate program priorities into clear plans, achievable milestones, and coordinated activities.

The candidate will lead a cross-functional team of 11 professionals supporting integrated master scheduling, capability roadmaps, requirements coordination, and execution tracking across defensive cyber development efforts.

The ideal candidate combines hands-on planning experience, strong communication skills, and practical team leadership. The role requires the ability to organize competing priorities, identify dependencies, and elevate issues with recommended solutions.

Primary Tasks:

• Lead, manage, mentor, and develop a cross-functional team of 11 professionals supporting Air Force defensive cyber capability development, ensuring accountability, collaboration, and mission-focused execution.
• Serve as the primary day-to-day coordination point for the Program Office’s Materiel Leader, government representatives, engineering teams, prime contractors, subcontractors, and industry partners to align priorities, clarify responsibilities, and establish execution expectations.
• Oversee team assignments, engineering deliverables, milestones, resource commitments, and execution progress, identifying competing priorities, constraints, and concerns while recommending solutions to program leadership.
• Provide leadership with actionable recommendations on scheduling options, resource requirements, delivery tradeoffs, and execution priorities to support informed decision-making.
• Lead the development and maintenance of the resource-loaded Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) for IDCS and related defensive cyber activities, incorporating engineering activities, capability development, contractual milestones, technical dependencies, and decision points.
• Establish and maintain reliable schedule baselines by integrating subordinate project schedules into a consolidated portfolio baseline, ensuring accurate dependencies, traceability, consistent planning practices, and accountability.
• Apply critical path analysis, resource assessments, schedule performance measures, impact reviews, and what-if analyses to forecast outcomes, evaluate planning alternatives, identify risks, and recommend corrective actions based on planned versus actual performance.
• Coordinate the development and maintenance of milestone-based capability roadmaps with engineering, product, program management, and government stakeholders, ensuring achievable delivery timelines aligned with approved objectives, technical requirements, resource availability, operational priorities, and the IMS.
• Identify cross-program dependencies, integration constraints, and critical decision points affecting near-term and long-range planning while preparing roadmap views and status products highlighting capability timelines, readiness, and key dependencies.
• Maintain configuration and version control of strategic planning artifacts, ensuring consistency and alignment across schedules, roadmaps, requirements, and delivery commitments.
• Support requirements management, governance, and traceability by coordinating with requirements authorities, systems engineering, product teams, and developers to align approved priorities, requirements baselines, engineering activities, integrated schedules, roadmaps, and delivery milestones.
• Identify requirements decomposition gaps, ambiguities, dependencies, and planning misalignments that create delivery risks while maintaining appropriate configuration management controls and incorporating critical decision points into planning and reporting.
• Establish and maintain consistent processes for identifying, documenting, communicating, and tracking execution risks, issues, and dependencies across programs and stakeholders.
• Evaluate program performance, resource constraints, technical interdependencies, and delivery trends to identify emerging mission risks and recommend mitigation strategies, alternative sequencing, and resource allocation options.
• Develop concise status assessments and practical performance indicators covering actual progress, forecasted milestones, team capacity, outstanding dependencies, and leadership decisions, supported by integrated schedule, requirements, resource, and capability analysis.
• Facilitate cross-functional planning discussions, milestone reviews, and coordination sessions to align organizations with competing priorities, technical dependencies, and varying execution maturity while establishing realistic commitments.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to resolve alignment challenges, clarify ownership, document decisions, and ensure accurate, timely, and actionable information is provided for portfolio reporting.
• Establish and maintain consistent policies, procedures, operating rhythms, and best practices for scheduling, roadmap development, requirements alignment, baseline management, and cross-organizational reporting.
• Identify operational inefficiencies, duplicative reporting, and unnecessary administrative burdens while recommending and implementing approved process improvements that strengthen transparency, accountability, and execution efficiency.
• Promote disciplined use of collaboration, scheduling, and work-management tools while driving measurable improvements through stakeholder feedback, lessons learned, continuous improvement, and mission-focused execution.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Systems Engineering, Cybersecurity, Information Technology, Business Management, Program Management, or a related discipline with 12+ years of relevant experience, or a Master’s degree with 10+ years of relevant experience. Additional years of relevant experience may be accepted in lieu of a degree.
• Active Secret clearance and ability to obtain and maintain TS/SCI within 90 days.
• Demonstrated experience leading or coordinating a multidisciplinary technical team in defense, cybersecurity, engineering, or related programs.
• Ability to translate leadership priorities into executable plans and measurable objectives.
• Hands-on experience developing or maintaining integrated master schedules, roadmaps, schedule baselines, and critical path analyses.
• Knowledge of requirements management, traceability, schedule dependencies, risk, and integrated execution.
• Experience coordinating government, prime contractor, subcontractor, and engineering stakeholders.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Project, Project Server, Deltek Open Plan, or comparable scheduling tools.
• Working knowledge of Jira, Confluence, SharePoint, or similar enterprise tools.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to summarize technical and schedule information for program stakeholders.
• Ability to organize competing priorities, exercise sound judgment, and resolve routine execution challenges in a fast-paced environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting Air Force cybersecurity programs, Air Force Cyber Command, or DoD Defensive Cyber Operations.
• Experience coordinating with a DoD Program Office, Materiel Leader, or acquisition and engineering stakeholders.
• Understanding of DoD acquisition, systems engineering lifecycle management, and capability development.
• Experience coordinating planning and delivery across engineering, development, and operational teams.
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies and integration of iterative delivery into enterprise schedules.
• Experience improving requirements traceability, planning frameworks, governance, and performance reporting.
• Ability to prepare leadership-ready roadmaps, dashboards, risk summaries, and schedule forecasts.
• Experience facilitating planning sessions, technical reviews, and program status briefings.

Performance Expectations

• Strategic Alignment: Clear connections among government priorities, requirements, execution activities, and capability outcomes.
• Program Visibility: Timely, accurate reporting across schedules, roadmaps, dependencies, risks, and commitments.
• Execution Predictability: Credible schedules, milestone performance, early constraint identification, and effective critical-path management.
• Team Coordination: Clear task ownership, effective workload coordination, and follow-through on assigned deliverables.
• Stakeholder Confidence: Trusted relationships grounded in transparency, responsiveness, technical credibility, and reliable delivery.
• Continuous Improvement: Measurable advances in planning maturity, requirements integration, execution efficiency, and decision support.

Position Impact

• The Strategy Execution Lead plays an important role in connecting program priorities to organized, measurable execution across the IDCS mission.
• By maintaining integrated plans, coordinating technical stakeholders, and tracking progress and risks, this role helps program leadership understand delivery status and make timely decisions.
• The successful candidate will lead the assigned team, take ownership of day-to-day execution coordination, and escalate decisions or constraints beyond the team’s authority.

If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo - because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 - and moving faster than anyone else dares.

Original Posting:

For U.S. Positions: While subject to change based on business needs, Leidos reasonably anticipates that this job requisition will remain open for at least 3 days with an anticipated close date of no earlier than 3 days after the original posting date as listed above.

Pay Range:

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.