AMERICAN SYSTEMS, a 100% employee-owned federal contractor, is seeking a Mission Operations and Weapons and Tactics Subject Matter Expert to support the Mission Engineering and Integration Team in Arlington, Virginia. You will serve as the operational voice of the mission, translating warfighter needs, mission workflows, weapons and tactics considerations, and partner requirements into actionable integration priorities that deliver measurable mission value.

The ideal candidate is a trusted operational advisor who brings sound judgment, a mission-first mindset, and the ability to bridge operational users with technical teams. You are comfortable working across complex, classified environments and communicating mission impacts, risks, and recommendations to senior stakeholders.

*** This job requisition is for potential upcoming work at AMERICAN SYSTEMS and does not represent a current opening. Qualified candidates will be contacted when the work/funding becomes available. ***

As a Mission Operations and Weapons and Tactics SME at AMERICAN SYSTEMS, you will:

• Translate mission needs, weapons and tactics considerations, user workflows, partner requirements, and desired outcomes into intake records, need statements, and integration requirements.
• Define operational context, including mission owners, data owners, system and platform owners, requesting teams, partners, users, urgency, and required timelines.
• Assess mission dependencies across applications, data products, use cases, decision timelines, operational workflows, and mission impacts.
• Advise on operational priority, data value, releasability, user-access needs, workflow constraints, training needs, and mission acceptance criteria.
• Participate in design, compliance, and readiness reviews to ensure classification, information-domain, partner-access, authorization, ABAC, and cross-domain decisions support mission execution.
• Coordinate with Government stakeholders, internal teams, and partner organizations to validate requirements, resolve operational issues, and remove integration barriers.
• Develop operational artifacts, including inputs to interface documentation, mission scenarios, test plans, validation criteria, readiness reviews, runbooks, and handoff materials.
• Validate integrated capabilities from a mission operations perspective, including data usability, application behavior, access decisions, workflow performance, resilience, and readiness.
• Support production transitions through cutover planning, post-deployment reviews, incident-impact assessments, lessons learned, user feedback, and improvement-backlog prioritization.
• Provide expert guidance on mission operations, weapons and tactics, partner coordination, training needs, operational risk, and mission integration throughout the capability lifecycle.
• Brief senior Government, mission, technical, and partner stakeholders on operational value, mission impacts, risks, dependencies, and recommended courses of action.

• Active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility and ability to obtain and maintain and SAP access.
• Bachelor’s degree in operations, aviation, engineering, defense studies, information systems, military science, or a related field. Relevant operational experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.
• 8 to 10 years of related experience in military or intelligence operations, mission operations, weapons and tactics, operational test, mission planning, command and control, or a comparable defense environment.
• Demonstrated expertise translating operational needs and user workflows into clear requirements, mission scenarios, acceptance criteria, readiness criteria, and integration priorities.
• Experience advising Government and technical stakeholders on the mission impacts of data availability, application onboarding, user access, releasability, authorization decisions, classification, and cross-domain constraints.
• Experience leading or influencing requirements discussions, integration design reviews, operational readiness reviews, mission-validation events, and post-deployment reviews.
• Working knowledge of classified operations, information domains, partner data-sharing constraints, access-control policies, and operational risk.
• Experience developing operational artifacts, including mission scenarios, test plans, validation criteria, readiness-review inputs, runbooks, handoff materials, and risk assessments.
• Experience with mission-planning, command-and-control, operational-reporting, briefing, and secure-collaboration tools.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to brief senior Government, mission, technical, and partner stakeholders.