Manager – Software Development and Test

Vantor is forging the new frontier of spatial intelligence, helping decision makers and operators navigate what’s happening now and shape what’s coming next.  Vantor is a place for problem solvers, changemakers, and go-getters—where people are working together to help our customers see the world differently, and in doing so, be seen differently. Come be part of a mission, not just a job, where you can: Shape your own future, build the next big thing, and change the world.

To be eligible for this position, you must be a U.S. Person, defined as a U.S. citizen, permanent resident, Asylee, or Refugee.



Export Control/ITAR: Certain roles may be subject to U.S. export control laws, requiring U.S. person status as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).

Please review the job details below.

The Manager of Software Development and Test leads a cross-discipline team responsible for the software systems behind Vantor’s electro-optical products, which use more than 100 petabytes of satellite imagery. In partnership with Operations, the team provides engineering support to investigate production issues, improve system availability, and reduce avoidable manual work.

We are looking for a hands-on leader to take ownership of this newly formed development and test team to address operational and new business needs. The manager assesses requests, clarifies urgency and impact, sets achievable plans, and assigns work based on skills and capacity.

The manager sets clear expectations, draws on senior staff for technical leadership, and coaches less experienced team members to take on broader ownership. The manager stays technical enough to guide architecture, question decisions, and remove blockers while delegating day-to-day delivery.

Responsibilities

·       Lead a cross-discipline team of software developers and testers responsible for resolving operational issues in mission-critical systems and delivering new capabilities for government customer programs.

·       Lead the team in an “AI-first” mindset that leverages these tools for improved performance, reliability, and operational efficiency.

·       Assess incoming requests for mission impact, urgency, scope, dependencies, and effort; clarify expected outcomes and communicate priorities and tradeoffs to stakeholders.

·       Assign and rebalance work using team capacity and individual strengths. Maintain a sustainable workload across development and test, and use supported stretch assignments to broaden members’ knowledge of system domains beyond their current expertise.

·       Set clear goals, delivery plans, schedules, roles, and performance expectations. Make progress, ownership, and risks visible, and hold the team accountable for commitments.

·       Coach and develop team members at different experience levels. Delegate meaningful ownership, mentor junior staff, draw on senior staff as technical leads, and create opportunities for knowledge sharing and growth.

·       Set the team’s test strategy and expectations for test planning, automation, integration, regression, and acceptance testing. Prioritize defects and ensure releases have clear evidence of readiness.

·       Partner with Product, Engineering, Operations, architecture, cybersecurity, and customers to define capabilities, resolve dependencies, and align priorities.

·       Lead service modernization and continuous improvement. Identify delivery, staffing, operational, and quality risks early, remove obstacles, and communicate mitigation plans to leadership and customers.

·       Guide software from requirements and architecture through development, integration, testing, deployment, customer acceptance, and production support. Build shared ownership for deployed services, including on-call responsibilities as appropriate.

AI-Enabled Development and Test

The manager leads the team in applying AI to resolve recurring operational issues and develop workflows that diagnose, validate, and apply approved fixes.

The team builds auditable workflows to detect known issue patterns, identify likely causes, apply approved fixes, verify results, and improve production outcomes. Engineers review uncertain or high-impact cases, and all automation follows security and mission assurance requirements.

·       Own and deliver a roadmap for AI-enabled issue resolution, prioritizing recurring, high-impact issues for automation.

·       Lead development of AI-enabled workflows that correlate telemetry, triage incidents, identify likely causes, apply approved fixes, generate or select regression tests, and verify service health.

·       Maximize fully automated resolution for eligible, well-understood issues. Define confidence thresholds, permissions, rollback behavior, and escalation paths so ambiguous, novel, or high-impact cases reach an engineer with evidence and recommended next steps.

·       Establish evaluation practices using representative cases, regression tests, and production outcomes. Track autonomous resolution rate, time to resolution, repeat incidents, fix accuracy, escaped defects, escalations, and rollbacks; use results to improve workflows.

·       Ensure models, tools, data, and automated actions comply with customer policies, data protection requirements, cybersecurity controls, and restrictions for classified environments.

Qualifications

·       Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline

·       At least three years of progressively responsible leadership experience in software development, test, software delivery, or production engineering.

·       Must be a U.S. citizen and willing and able to obtain a Secret security clearance or higher.

·       A record of taking ownership of active software delivery work, evaluating requests, setting priorities, and converting them into assignments and achievable plans.

·       Experience leading a team with a range of experience levels and disciplines, balancing workloads, delegating effectively, and developing team members.

·       Experience delivering complex software into production and operating services with production ownership or on-call support.

·       Experience leading AI-enabled engineering or operational automation in production, with measurable improvements to service or delivery outcomes.

·       Experience balancing technical priorities, business needs, team capacity, schedules, and operational requirements.

·       Experience establishing or improving test strategies that include automation, integration, regression, performance, or acceptance testing.

·       Working knowledge of AWS cloud environments.

Preferred Qualifications

·       Experience delivering AI-enabled operational support, automated diagnosis and remediation, or AI-assisted development and testing for production systems.

·       Working knowledge of spacecraft subsystems, satellite operations, or other mission-critical software-intensive systems.

·       Experience with continuous integration and delivery, automated test frameworks, and modern software quality practices.

·       Experience with cloud-native architectures, containerized environments, and automated deployment pipelines.

·       Experience working on classified National Security Space, Intelligence Community, or Department of Defense programs.

What Success Looks Like

·       Eligible recurring issues are resolved automatically when confidence and impact thresholds are met, improving service stability and reducing resolution time and repeat incidents while preserving escalation and rollback for uncertain or high-impact cases.

·       Work is distributed fairly across developers and testers, with urgent operational needs handled without losing sight of planned delivery.

·       Senior and junior team members contribute at the right level, share knowledge, and gain supported opportunities to work in new domains.

·       AI is used prolifically in software development, testing, and in researching operational issues.

Pay Transparency: To support pay transparency, Vantor includes salary ranges in all U.S. job postings. Starting pay for this role will fall within the listed range and will be based on factors such as experience, qualifications, skills, location, and market conditions. Candidates who meet the minimum requirements for the role should not expect to receive compensation at the top of the range. The listed range reflects the expected pay for this position, and final offers will be determined based on each candidate’s experience, expertise, and alignment with the role.

● The base pay for this position within Colorado is: $122,000.00 - $162,000.00 - $178,200.00 annually.

For all other states, we use geographic cost of labor as an input to develop market-driven ranges for our roles, and as such, each location where we hire may have a different range.

Benefits: Vantor offers a competitive total rewards package that goes beyond the standard, including a robust 401(k) with company match, mental health resources, and unique perks like student loan repayment assistance, adoption reimbursement and pet insurance to support all aspects of your life. You can find more information on our benefits at: https://www.Vantor.com/careers

Additionally, this position is incentive eligible with a target based on contribution, company performance, and/or individual results achieved; the specific incentive plan and target amount will be determined based on the role and breadth of contributions.

The application window is three days from the date the job is posted and will remain posted until a qualified candidate has been identified for hire.  If the job is reposted regardless of reason, it will remain posted three days from the date the job is reposted and will remain reposted until a qualified candidate has been identified for hire. 

The date of posting can be found on Vantor's Career page at the top of each job posting.

To apply, submit your application via Vantor's Career page.

EEO Policy: Vantor is an equal opportunity employer committed to an inclusive workplace. We believe in fostering an environment where all team members feel respected, valued, and encouraged to share their ideas. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, protected veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law.