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Set Boundaries is hiring a Principal Project Engineer. This is the senior technical seat on aerospace, defense and maritime programs that are starting badly, slipping, or finishing late. You will be the person who knows what is really happening on the program, and who makes the team deliver it.
What the job actually is
A program has an integrated master schedule. Underneath it sit hundreds of day-to-day activities owned by people who do not report to you: design engineers, manufacturing engineers, quality engineers, buyers, test technicians. The schedule only means something if those activities happen when they said they would.
That is the job. Not building the schedule, though you will influence it heavily, and not reporting on it, though you will keep it honest. Making it happen. You chase the activity that has gone quiet and find out whether the problem is technical, a supplier, a decision nobody has made, or a person carrying too much, and you escalate while recovery is still cheap. You hold interdisciplinary team members accountable for commitments they made, which means being willing to have the conversation nobody else wants to have, repeatedly, without letting it turn personal.
What you own
| Area | What that means week to week |
|---|---|
| Schedule execution | Knowing the state of every near-term activity on the critical path, who owns it and whether it will land. Raising the ones that will not, early. |
| Team accountability | Holding engineering, manufacturing, quality and supply chain to the dates they committed to, and making the consequence of a slip visible to the program manager while there is still time. |
| Requirements and verification | Every contractual and derived requirement traced to the evidence that will satisfy it, and the gaps found before a customer review finds them. |
| Changes | Driving changes through the board, out to suppliers and into the configuration, without losing track of which design is the approved one. |
| Suppliers | Owning the supplier's technical queue, so a delivery is never delayed by an unanswered question about a drawing, a tolerance or a process. |
| Test and qualification readiness | Hardware, procedures, fixtures, instrumentation and people ready before the slot opens, because a missed test slot is rarely recoverable. |
| Quality system adherence | Keeping the technical work inside the quality management system the organization already has, and giving the quality engineer what they need for the first article package they own and sign. |
| Data deliverables | The technical data the contract requires, in the form the customer can accept, on the dates it is due. |
What we are looking for
- Technical breadth rather than deep specialization. The job crosses design, manufacturing, quality and supply chain, and programs go wrong in the gaps between them.
- Hardware carried through qualification or certification and into production, more than once.
- Experience of a program that went badly. We will ask what you found, what you changed, and what you would do differently.
- Fluency in the documents that run these programs: drawings and specifications, change requests, nonconformance reports, verification matrices and the technical data package.
- The judgement to tell a customer, or your own leadership, something they do not want to hear, with the evidence behind it and an alternative to offer.
- Willingness to travel to where the work is.
What you will not be asked to do
Write status that is more optimistic than the facts. That is the one thing this firm will not do, and it is most of the reason customers call us. If a date is not going to hold, you say so early, with options and the cost of each. Nobody here will ask you to soften it on the way up.
You will also not be asked to carry a program alone. A Set Boundaries program manager owns time, cost, the customer relationship and the decisions, and you work alongside them. Where a program needs more technical capacity than one person can give it, we staff it.
Why the role exists
This firm gets called when a program is already at risk, and almost every time, the technical execution and the schedule have drifted apart from each other. Someone has to close that gap in person. A program manager cannot do it from a status deck, and the customer's own engineers are usually the people who are already overloaded. That is the seat this role fills, and it is the reason our engagements end with a delivered program rather than a report.
Apply
Send a resume and a short note about one program you delivered or recovered, and what you personally did on it. Every application is read by a person.
Questions
Common questions
What does a principal project engineer do at Set Boundaries?
You make the day-to-day work behind the integrated master schedule happen on time, and you hold the interdisciplinary team accountable for it. Every task in that schedule belongs to someone in engineering, manufacturing, quality or supply chain. You are the person who knows whether it is moving, finds out why when it is not, and escalates while there is still time to recover. On top of that you own the technical threads: requirements and verification, changes, supplier technical questions, test readiness and data deliverables, all held to the quality management system already in place.
How is this different from the senior project engineer role?
Scope and judgement. A senior project engineer owns a substantial thread of a program. A principal owns the technical execution of the whole program, sometimes across more than one at a time, and is trusted to walk into a troubled program and work out what is actually wrong. On some engagements you will be the most senior technical person in the room, sitting next to the program manager rather than reporting up through a chain of engineers.
Do I own first article inspections in this role?
No, and it is worth being precise about it because the question comes up in every interview. First article inspection is the quality engineer's responsibility and the quality engineer signs it. What you own is keeping the work inside the quality management system already in place, and making sure the quality engineer has what they need, when they need it, so the program is never waiting on that package.
How much experience are you looking for?
Engineers who have carried aerospace, defense or maritime hardware through qualification or certification and into production, more than once, and who have been inside at least one program that went badly and had to be recovered. The years matter less than that second part. Recovering a program teaches you which status reports to disbelieve, and that is most of this job.
Is this a staffing placement?
No. You work inside a customer's program, but as part of a Set Boundaries team under a Set Boundaries program manager, with our methods and our accountability for the outcome. You are not an extra pair of hands under someone else's direction, and you are not left to invent your own approach either.
How much travel is involved?
Real but bounded, and planned around where the work is. Aerospace problems get solved on factory floors and at suppliers, so expect to be on site, including at customer and supplier facilities when something has to be resolved in person. Site access, badging and any citizenship or clearance requirements are confirmed before an engagement starts.
What does the hiring process look like?
A conversation with Holly Dekle, who runs the firm and is an engineer as well as a PMP, then a technical discussion about a program you have actually delivered or recovered. We are more interested in how you worked out what was wrong than in a list of tools you have used. Apply through the form on this page with a resume; every application is read by a person.