Principal / Sr. Principal Engineer Reliability

RELOCATION ASSISTANCE: No relocation assistance available

CLEARANCE REQUIRED FOR START: No

CLEARANCE TYPE: Secret

TRAVEL: No Description

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon.

We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.

Northrop Grumman Weapons Systems is currently seeking Principal Reliability Engineer 3 or Sr. Principal Reliability Engineer 4 for our Elkton, Maryland location.

The Northrop Grumman Propulsion Systems and Controls (PS&C) facility in Elkton, Maryland began solid-propellant rocket operations in 1948. Today, the Elkton PS&C facility designs, develops, and produces solid-propellant propulsion and ordnance systems in programs professionally managed for a wide variety of Government and commercial customers.

The facility also serves as the hub for offsite engineering and test facilities in Ronkonkoma, NY, Palm Beach Gardens, FL and San Jose, CA.

Job Summary

As Principal Reliability Engineer 3 or Sr. Principal Reliability Engineer 4 , you will provide reliability engineering leadership for the Elkton propulsion manufacturing campus, with a primary focus on improving the availability, maintainability, safety, and lifecycle performance of facilities infrastructure, utilities, manufacturing support systems, and critical plant assets.

You will develop and implement data-driven reliability programs that reduce unplanned downtime, identify and mitigate failure risks, optimize preventive and predictive maintenance strategies, and support informed capital-replacement decisions.

This role will work closely with facilities engineering, maintenance, manufacturing, EHS, quality, operations, program management, and external suppliers to ensure that facility systems consistently meet operational and mission requirements.

You will blend reliability analysis, field investigation, statistical methods, and practical engineering judgment to:

• Lead reliability and maintainability studies for facility systems, utilities, equipment, and infrastructure.
• Develop and improve reliability-centered maintenance and preventive-maintenance programs.
• Analyze equipment performance, work-order history, process-control data, and failure reports to identify systemic risks.
• Support capital planning, equipment selection, design reviews, commissioning, and lifecycle-cost decisions.
• Drive corrective actions and continuous improvement across facilities and maintenance operations.

This role requires effective communication of technical findings and recommendations to engineering teams, maintenance personnel, operations leaders, senior site leadership, contractors, and customers.

Core Technical Responsibilities:

• Reliability Program Development and Leadership
• Develop, coordinate, and implement reliability engineering programs for facilities systems, utilities, equipment, and infrastructure.
• Establish reliability objectives, performance measures, and improvement plans aligned with operational, customer, safety, and regulatory requirements.
• Develop reliability strategies for critical assets, including electrical distribution, HVAC, compressed air, water systems, process support equipment, fire protection, building systems, and other facility infrastructure.
• Support the development of asset criticality rankings based on safety, mission impact, production impact, environmental risk, maintainability, and lifecycle cost.
• Serve as a technical resource for reliability methods, failure analysis, maintenance optimization, and asset-management decisions.
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• Reliability and Maintainability Analysis
• Conduct Failure Modes and Effects Analyses (FMEA/FMECA), fault-tree analyses, criticality analyses, and other structured reliability assessments for facility systems and equipment.
• Develop reliability and maintainability allocations, predictions, and performance targets where appropriate for major facility systems and capital projects.
• Analyze preliminary facility plans, equipment selections, and design concepts to identify potential reliability, maintainability, safety, and lifecycle-cost risks.
• Recommend design changes, redundancy, monitoring methods, spare-parts strategies, or maintenance approaches to improve system reliability.
• Evaluate the effect of system configuration, operating conditions, environmental factors, installation quality, and maintenance practices on asset performance.
• Data Analysis, Statistical Methods, and Performance Monitoring
• Compile and analyze CMMS work-order data, preventive-maintenance compliance, equipment history, downtime records, condition-monitoring results, process-control statistics, and failure reports.
• Identify trends and variables that may contribute to recurring failures, reduced availability, excessive maintenance, or increased operating cost.
• Develop reliability dashboards and key performance indicators, including mean time between failures, mean time to repair, availability, planned-to-unplanned work, repeat failures, PM effectiveness, and maintenance backlog.
• Apply statistical methods, trend analysis, and design-of-experiment concepts as appropriate to investigate reliability problems and validate corrective actions.
• Develop or maintain mathematical and analytical models to identify assets, systems, or processes with excessive failure risk.
• Present technical findings and recommendations clearly to technical and nontechnical audiences.
• FMEA, Root Cause, and Corrective Action
• Lead or support root-cause analysis, failure investigations, and corrective-action activities for facility and equipment failures.
• Support the site’s failure reporting, analysis, and corrective-action processes, including documentation of failure modes, contributing causes, containment actions, and permanent corrective actions.
• Verify that corrective measures address the underlying failure mechanism and meet acceptable reliability, maintainability, safety, and operational standards.
• Track corrective actions through closure and assess whether implemented actions produce sustained improvement.
• Develop lessons learned and update maintenance procedures, asset strategies, design standards, and CMMS knowledge records based on completed investigations.
• Reliability - Centered Maintenance and CMMS
• Develop, implement, and improve Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) strategies for critical facilities assets.
• Review preventive-maintenance tasks, frequencies, job plans, and inspection methods to eliminate ineffective work and improve failure prevention.
• Integrate predictive-maintenance techniques such as vibration analysis, infrared thermography, oil analysis, ultrasonic inspection, electrical testing, and condition monitoring where appropriate.
• Define work-order requirements, failure codes, asset hierarchies, failure-mode libraries, and data-quality standards within the CMMS.
• Analyze PM compliance, overdue work, repeat work orders, emergency maintenance, and maintenance-related downtime to identify improvement opportunities.
• Recommend spare-parts stocking levels and obsolescence strategies based on criticality, failure history, lead time, repairability, and business impact.
• Capital Projects, Design Reviews, and Commissioning
• Participate in facilities capital projects from concept through cl