Management & Leadership Jobs in El Segundo, CA (Now Hiring) — 559 open — Page 4

About Istari

Istari Digital builds the connective tissue for defense acquisition. Our platform lets engineering models, simulations, and digital threads move securely across primes, suppliers, and government program offices, so a system can be tested, trusted, and fielded in months rather than years. We work at the center of some of the hardest problems in defense acquisition: getting the right model, to the right person, at the right classification, at the right time. We are a small, senior team, and every hire changes what the company can do next.

We hire for judgment, curiosity, and a bias toward action more than for a specific degree or years of experience. That said, people who do well in this role tend to share a few things:

• A track record of owning an outcome with no formal authority over the people delivering it, and finding that energizing rather than alarming.

• Insider fluency in the following customer domain… the kind that comes from having lived it, along with a clear view of what is broken in how that world works today.

Domain: commercial-speed aerospace development — companies building aircraft and space systems on iterative, hardware-rich cadences, where engineering data, configuration control, and certification evidence have to keep pace with a build tempo measured in months

• Technical conversancy across modeling and simulation, MBSE, digital threads, software development, and/or agentic design: enough to interrogate an engineering claim and be credible doing it, not necessarily enough to build it yourself.

• Product sense, because this role sits closer to product management than to project management: knowing what to build next and what not to build at all, and telling the difference between a request that serves one user and a capability that belongs in the platform.

• The range to brief a program executive in the morning and pair with an engineer in the afternoon.

• An instinct for reading rooms and organizational dynamics, because adoption is won in the customer's org chart as much as in the software.

• Comfort operating with incomplete information and shifting requirements, and the initiative to define next steps without being told.

Preferred, not required

• Highly desired: Experience in a forward deployed, deployment strategist, or field delivery role at a technology or defense company.

• A prior key personnel Program Manager designation on a DoD or NASA contract, or time inside a government program office, uniformed or civilian.

• Working familiarity with government contracting mechanics: deliverable cadences, milestone reviews, option years, and what a contracting officer cares about.

• A track record of converting delivery into growth: an option year exercised, an expansion won, a pilot that became a program of record.

• Eligibility to obtain and hold a U.S. security clearance, given the classified and controlled environments this role supports.

We've built a team of what we call Wizards -- people who bring depth in their domain and range across others, who are collaborative without being deferential, and who genuinely care about what we're building. We celebrate individual contributions, give feedback early and often, and argue about ideas so we can execute together.

There's no room here for hierarchy for its own sake, or for busywork that doesn't move the mission. We are outcomes-driven, and we hold each other to a high standard — with genuine respect for each person's expertise and wellbeing.

Focus is rewarded.  Finish is remembered.

Facts are friendly.  Even when they are not fun.

Fellowship is fundamental.  Make others successful.