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Lockheed Martin Hiring Guide 2026
Updated 2026-07-21

Lockheed Martin runs IBM BrassRing.
Four segments, one resume bar.

Why this matters

IBM BrassRing behind a Radancy TalentBrew career site reads your resume first, not the Workday its defense peers RTX and Boeing run. On many Lockheed roles, your US citizenship and clearance are screened before a recruiter reads a word. The behavioral bar is Lockheed's three values, Do What's Right, Respect Others, and Perform with Excellence, written in STAR.

Segment targetingClearance in the headerRewrite plan
By the numbers
Application system
BrassRing
Behind a Radancy TalentBrew site
Business segments
4
Aero, Missiles, Rotary, Space
Engineers
~72K
Of ~123K employees, FY2025
Eligibility gate
Clearance
US-person gate on many roles

The quick answer

What is a Lockheed Martin-ready resume in 2026?

Lockheed Martin runs its Aeronautics, Missiles and Fire Control, Rotary and Mission Systems, and Space segments through IBM BrassRing behind a Radancy TalentBrew career site, not the Workday its defense peers RTX and Boeing run, so a BrassRing parser reads your resume before a recruiter does: single column, standard section headings, contact details in the body, no tables, text boxes, or graphics, and a text-layer PDF or DOCX so the Talent Gateway can auto-fill your fields. Many positions require US citizenship plus the ability to obtain and maintain a US government security clearance (Secret, Top Secret, or TS/SCI) and ITAR eligibility, so put an active clearance in the header where it is a top-weighted signal. Frame every bullet in STAR against Lockheed's three values, Do What's Right, Respect Others, and Perform with Excellence, and carry your segment's program vocabulary: F-35 for Aeronautics, PAC-3 and THAAD for Missiles and Fire Control, Black Hawk and Aegis for Rotary and Mission Systems, GPS III and Orion for Space. .

Lockheed Martin closed FY2025 with approximately 123,000 employees, including about 72,000 engineers, scientists, and IT professionals, and reported the F-35 at about 27 percent of total company sales, per its FY2025 Form 10-K filed January 29, 2026. For job seekers, that is evidence of a large, engineering-dominated, net-hiring defense prime.

Lockheed Martin's ATS of record is IBM BrassRing (Infinite / Kenexa BrassRing). The public lockheedmartinjobs.com is a Radancy TalentBrew career site (company 694) that renders the job pages and the marketing layer on top. When you press Apply, the flow hands off to BrassRing at sjobs.brassring.com, the /TGnewUI/ Talent Gateway (partnerid 25037, siteid 5010 for experienced hires and 5014 for early careers).

This is the ownable detail. Lockheed does not run Workday. Its defense peers RTX and Boeing both apply through Workday, but Lockheed is on BrassRing. A Workday result you might see, ngc.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com, is Northrop Grumman's tenant, not Lockheed's.

It is not Taleo either: a lockheedmartinjobs.com/search-jobs/taleo URL is a literal keyword search, not a taleo.net careersection. It is not iCIMS, not Greenhouse, not Lever, not Avature, and not SuccessFactors. It is IBM BrassRing behind a Radancy front end.

BrassRing parse rules are load-bearing: a single column, standard section headings, contact details in the body, and no tables, columns, text boxes, graphics, or scanned images. Submit a DOCX or a clean text-layer PDF, because the BrassRing Talent Gateway can auto-fill your application fields from the resume you upload, and a clean, machine-readable structure is what makes that work. Clean formatting gets your resume parsed and read. What gets you advanced is content a recruiter can score fast: STAR bullets framed against Lockheed's values, carrying your segment's program vocabulary, each tied to a number.

One ATS, four segments

One ATS.
Four vocabularies.

The same BrassRing parser scores four different keyword indexes: an Aeronautics resume, a Missiles and Fire Control resume, a Rotary and Mission Systems resume, and a Space resume are read against four different program vocabularies. Across all four, one layer stays constant: ITAR, a security clearance, MBSE, MIL-STD and DoD standards, and systems engineering. Carry the language of the segment you are applying to, not a generic defense word list. For the full keyword bank by segment, see the Lockheed Martin resume keywords guide.

  1. 01
    Aeronautics segment

    Aeronautics

    Advanced military aircraft and stealth, plus Skunk Works advanced development. The F-35 Lightning II, F-22 Raptor, F-16 Fighting Falcon, and C-130 Hercules. The F-35 alone is about 27 percent of total company sales.

    Vocabulary to mirror

    F-35 Lightning II, F-22 Raptor, F-16 Fighting Falcon, C-130 Hercules, Skunk Works, low-observable and stealth, and AS9100, under ITAR and an active clearance.

  2. 02
    Missiles and Fire Control segment

    Missiles and Fire Control

    Air and missile defense and precision fires. Interceptors, targeting, and fire-control systems for the US and allied militaries.

    Vocabulary to mirror

    PAC-3, THAAD, ATACMS, precision fires, fire control, and targeting and EO/IR sensors, under ITAR and an active clearance.

  3. 03
    Rotary and Mission Systems segment

    Rotary and Mission Systems

    Sikorsky helicopters, combat systems, and sensors. Rotary-wing platforms plus C4ISR and integrated combat and mission systems.

    Vocabulary to mirror

    UH-60 Black Hawk, MH-60 Seahawk, CH-53K King Stallion, Aegis Combat System, radar and sensors, and C4ISR.

  4. 04
    Space segment

    Space

    Human spaceflight, navigation, strategic deterrence, and missile defense. Crewed vehicles, satellites, the sea-based deterrent, and hypersonics.

    Vocabulary to mirror

    Orion, GPS III, Trident II D5 (Fleet Ballistic Missile), Next Gen OPIR, satellites, hypersonics, and missile defense.

One BrassRing site. Four keyword indexes. Match the segment, not a generic defense word list.

Lockheed Martin's leadership-development model is Full Spectrum Leadership, introduced in January 2006. It has five imperatives: Deliver Results; Shape the Future; Build Effective Relationships; Energize the Team; and Model Personal Excellence, Integrity and Accountability. It is the model Lockheed uses to develop and assess its leaders.

Read that precisely. Full Spectrum Leadership is a leadership framework, not a scorecard every applicant is graded against. As a candidate, the layer you write to is the three core values, Do What's Right, Respect Others, and Perform with Excellence, plus the STAR format (Situation, Task, Action, Result) that Lockheed interviewers use for behavioral questions.

So the practical move is to frame each bullet in STAR, tie it to one of the three values or, where it genuinely fits, a named Full Spectrum Leadership imperative, and attach a number. For the five imperatives mapped to resume language, the three values, and worked STAR examples, see the Full Spectrum Leadership spoke.

On many Lockheed Martin roles, two things are typically screened before a recruiter reads your resume: US citizenship and the ability to obtain and maintain a US government security clearance (Secret, Top Secret, or TS/SCI), plus ITAR and export-control eligibility. The reason is regulatory, not preference. The work is export-controlled, so Lockheed applies the filter before review begins.

One distinction matters. Lockheed does not grant clearances. Clearances are granted by the federal government, the DoD and its Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, they are requested for a specific job, and Lockheed sponsors the process. A clearance you held active within the past 24 months generally still counts as active.

Not every role is cleared, so read the posting. But many positions are, and if you are eligible, state your work authorization and clearance level clearly so a recruiter does not have to guess. An active, transferable clearance speeds a cleared offer materially.

That is why an active clearance belongs in your resume header, not buried in the body. On cleared Lockheed roles it is one of the highest-weighted signals a recruiter looks for first, so put it where it is found in one pass, and describe your eligibility accurately without overstating it.

How to structure your Lockheed Martin resume

Four steps from
generic resume to BrassRing-ready, value-mapped spec.

The minimum-viable rewrite for any Lockheed application. The full HowTo JSON-LD is published in the page schema; the visible steps below are byte-aligned with it.

01
Step

Pick your target segment and level

Choose the Lockheed segment you are applying to, Aeronautics for combat aircraft and Skunk Works, Missiles and Fire Control for air and missile defense, Rotary and Mission Systems for Sikorsky helicopters and combat systems, or Space for satellites and human spaceflight, and map your experience to a level. levels.fyi normalizes Lockheed engineering to an E1 to E7 band, which is community shorthand, not an official Lockheed grade map, so use it to gauge scope, not as an exact title. Then write at the altitude of the level you are targeting.

02
Step

Rewrite bullets as STAR plus metric pairs in your segment vocabulary

Write each bullet in STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result), tie it to one of Lockheed's three values, Do What's Right, Respect Others, or Perform with Excellence, or a named Full Spectrum Leadership imperative, and attach a number. Then carry the program vocabulary of your segment: F-35 and Skunk Works for Aeronautics; PAC-3 and THAAD for Missiles and Fire Control; Black Hawk and Aegis for Rotary and Mission Systems; GPS III and Orion for Space. The same BrassRing parser scores four different keyword indexes.

03
Step

Put clearance and eligibility in the header, then strip BrassRing-hostile formatting

On cleared roles, list an active clearance (Secret, Top Secret, or TS/SCI) and your US-person eligibility in the header, where the recruiter looks first. Then format for BrassRing: single column, standard section headings, contact details in the body, and a DOCX or clean text-layer PDF so the Talent Gateway can auto-fill your fields. Remove tables, multi-column layouts, text boxes, graphic skill bars, and scanned images.

04
Step

Scan against a Lockheed Martin job description on ResumeAdapter

Upload to ResumeAdapter to see your ATS-style score against the specific Lockheed job description, the missing segment vocabulary and value language, and a rewrite plan. Iterate until every bullet carries a quantified outcome in STAR, mapped to a Lockheed value and your segment's program terms.

Bullets a recruiter can score fast

Four worked bullets,
one per segment, each mapped to a leadership imperative.

Each bullet below is a compressed STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result), tagged with a named Full Spectrum Leadership imperative and carrying the program vocabulary of its segment, the kind of bullet a recruiter and a hiring manager can both score in one pass. For the full interview question bank, see the Lockheed Martin interview questions guide; for the loop and the clearance gate, see the Lockheed interview process spoke.

Aeronautics / Manufacturing EngineerDeliver Results

Recovered an F-35 assembly-line station to takt before it slipped the delivery plan

Situation
A low-observable coating station on the F-35 final-assembly line was running over takt time, creating a bottleneck that threatened the monthly delivery plan under AS9100.
Task
Recover the station to takt without compromising the stealth coating spec or the first-pass quality the program required.
Action
Led the root-cause analysis on the cure cycle and material handling, re-sequenced the station operations, and error-proofed the fixture and inspection step with the manufacturing and quality teams.
Result
Cut station cycle time about 22 percent, brought the line back to takt, and held the coating conformance and first-pass yield.
Resume bullet

Recovered an F-35 low-observable coating station to takt: led the cure-cycle root cause and re-sequenced operations, cutting station cycle time about 22 percent while holding the stealth-coating spec and first-pass yield.

Missiles and Fire Control / Test EngineerModel Personal Excellence, Integrity and Accountability

Held a PAC-3 test finding to full disclosure before the flight review

Situation
During PAC-3 interceptor qualification, a seeker anomaly showed up in a subset of environmental test runs, close to a flight-test review with schedule pressure to sign off.
Task
Establish whether the anomaly was real and disqualifying, and report it accurately, rather than let an ambiguous result pass the review.
Action
Rebuilt the test data reduction, reproduced the anomaly on the environmental rig, traced it to a targeting-sensor threshold, and documented the full finding and corrective action for the review board.
Result
Caught a real defect before flight, drove the corrective action to closure, and cleared the flight-test review with the qualification evidence complete and honest.
Resume bullet

Held a PAC-3 seeker anomaly to full disclosure: reproduced it on the environmental rig, traced it to a targeting-sensor threshold, and cleared the flight-test review with the corrective action closed and the evidence complete.

Space / Systems EngineerShape the Future

Set the model-based baseline that shortened GPS III payload integration

Situation
A GPS III navigation-payload integration effort was carrying requirements across disconnected documents, and the rework at each integration gate was eating the schedule.
Task
Give the program a single, verifiable requirements baseline that would hold across future payload builds, not just the current one.
Action
Stood up an MBSE model as the single source of truth, rebuilt the requirements-to-verification trace to MIL-STD and DoD standards, and tied the interface control to the model so changes propagated once.
Result
Cut integration rework at the gates, shortened the integration cycle, and left a reusable model baseline the next payload build inherited.
Resume bullet

Set the MBSE baseline for GPS III payload integration: rebuilt the requirements-to-verification trace to MIL-STD, cut gate rework, and left a reusable model the next build inherited.

Rotary and Mission Systems / Integration EngineerBuild Effective Relationships

Aligned a UH-60 Black Hawk and Aegis interface across two engineering teams

Situation
A mission-systems interface between a UH-60 Black Hawk avionics upgrade and an Aegis Combat System data feed was stalled by conflicting assumptions between two engineering teams, and the integration milestone was slipping.
Task
Get both teams to one agreed interface definition and integration plan without a schedule-killing redesign on either side.
Action
Ran the joint interface working sessions, reconciled the C4ISR message and timing assumptions into one interface control document, and sequenced the integration test so each team could verify against a shared baseline.
Result
Closed the interface disagreement, held the integration milestone, and cut integration defects on the shared data path.
Resume bullet

Aligned a UH-60 Black Hawk and Aegis interface across two teams: reconciled the C4ISR message and timing assumptions into one interface control document and held the integration milestone with fewer defects on the shared path.

The scale sets the context. Lockheed Martin closed FY2025 with about 123,000 employees, including roughly 72,000 engineers, scientists, and IT professionals, headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, and trading as LMT on the NYSE under chairman, president, and CEO James Taiclet. It is a net-hiring defense prime, and the workforce is engineering-dominated.

The F-35 anchors the portfolio. Per the FY2025 10-K, the F-35 is about 27 percent of total company sales and roughly 67 percent of Aeronautics sales, so Aeronautics program vocabulary reads as directly relevant to a large share of the hiring.

Lockheed also runs a formal path for transitioning military. The Lockheed Martin Heroes program, Hiring Our Heroes, DoD SkillBridge, and Handshake 2 Hire (H2H) are structured routes for veterans and service members leaving active duty, so a clean translation of military experience into segment program language pays off directly.

One caution against over-reading the demand: hiring is program-driven, so it moves with contracts. In June 2025, Lockheed cut about 180 roles, roughly 10 percent of its Greenville, South Carolina site, after the US Air Force ended a roughly $900 million F-16 maintenance contract. The company-wide posture is net hiring, but position it program by program, because a segment can hire and shed at the same time.

FAQ

Lockheed Martin hiring FAQ

The questions most candidates surface when they cross-check their resume against the Lockheed Martin hiring funnel. Answers are byte-identical to the FAQPage JSON-LD, because AI engines that extract HTML and AI engines that extract JSON-LD should not see different text.

How do I submit a resume to Lockheed Martin?

Apply on lockheedmartinjobs.com, the Radancy TalentBrew career site. When you press Apply, the flow hands off to Lockheed's applicant tracking system, IBM BrassRing, at sjobs.brassring.com, and you upload a resume through the BrassRing Talent Gateway, which can auto-fill your application fields. Use a single-column DOCX or clean text-layer PDF with standard section headings and no tables, text boxes, or graphics so it parses cleanly.

What does Lockheed Martin look for in a resume?

Clean, parser-safe formatting first, then STAR bullets (Situation, Task, Action, Result) tied to Lockheed's three values, Do What's Right, Respect Others, and Perform with Excellence, each with a quantified result. Carry your segment's program vocabulary (F-35, PAC-3, Black Hawk, GPS III, MBSE, MIL-STD), and if the role is cleared, put your clearance level in the header.

Is it difficult to get hired at Lockheed Martin?

It is competitive, and cleared roles add time. Lockheed is a large, net-hiring defense prime with about 72,000 engineers, scientists, and IT professionals, but many roles require US citizenship and a security clearance, which adds an eligibility step before review. Tailor your resume to the specific segment and put eligibility in the header.

Do I need a security clearance or US citizenship to work at Lockheed Martin?

Many positions require US citizenship plus the ability to obtain and maintain a US government security clearance (Secret, Top Secret, or TS/SCI) and ITAR eligibility. Lockheed sponsors the clearance but does not grant it; the federal government does, and it is requested for a specific job. Not every role is cleared, so read the posting, and if you hold an active clearance, put it in your resume header.

Does Lockheed Martin use Workday for job applications?

No. Lockheed Martin uses IBM BrassRing (Infinite / Kenexa BrassRing) as its applicant tracking system, behind a Radancy TalentBrew career site at lockheedmartinjobs.com. That is different from its defense peers RTX and Boeing, which both run Workday. A Workday listing at ngc.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com belongs to Northrop Grumman, not Lockheed. It is also not Taleo, iCIMS, Greenhouse, Lever, Avature, or SuccessFactors.

Which Lockheed Martin business segment should I apply to?

Aeronautics for combat aircraft and Skunk Works (F-35, F-22, F-16, C-130), Missiles and Fire Control for air and missile defense (PAC-3, THAAD, ATACMS), Rotary and Mission Systems for Sikorsky helicopters and combat systems (Black Hawk, CH-53K, Aegis), and Space for satellites and human spaceflight (Orion, GPS III, Trident II D5). One BrassRing site, four different keyword vocabularies.

What are Lockheed Martin's core values?

Three: Do What's Right, Respect Others, and Perform with Excellence. Alongside them, Full Spectrum Leadership is Lockheed's leadership-development model, with five imperatives, but that is a leadership framework rather than a scorecard every applicant is graded against, so write your bullets to the three values in STAR form.

How much does Lockheed Martin pay engineers?

Community data (levels.fyi, accessed July 2026) shows Lockheed engineering pay is base-heavy with almost no equity, the defense inversion of big-tech compensation: roughly $139K total at Senior (E3) and about $187K at Staff (E4). See the levels spoke for the full band and the caveats.

Continue

Go deeper on the parts
that need their own page.

Spoke

Full Spectrum Leadership and the three values, mapped to resume language

The five imperatives, Deliver Results, Shape the Future, Build Effective Relationships, Energize the Team, and Model Personal Excellence, Integrity and Accountability, plus the three core values and STAR, each with what it looks like on a resume bullet.

Read the spoke
Spoke

Lockheed engineer levels and pay, E1 to E7

The community-reported E1 to E7 band with levels.fyi-anchored compensation, base-heavy with almost no equity, the defense inversion of big tech, and the Fellow and Senior Fellow honorifics at the top.

Read the spoke
Spoke

The Lockheed interview process and clearance gate

The loop from recruiter screen through the STAR behavioral and technical rounds, plus how the clearance investigation adds time to a cleared offer.

Read the spoke
Resume example

Aerospace and defense engineer resume example

A worked aerospace-engineer resume with quantified, parser-safe bullets and program vocabulary, the structure this guide describes, shown end to end.

See the example
Related cornerstone

Cleared defense engineer: the recovery playbook.

Cleared and moving between primes, or re-entering after a gap? The cornerstone covers how to position an active clearance, frame program work under ITAR without oversharing, and rebuild a defense-ready resume. You can also read the defense and aerospace careers guide or browse all company resume hubs.

Read the cleared defense engineer recovery playbook
Engineer your Lockheed Martin resume

Run your resume
against a Lockheed Martin job description.

Get your ATS-style score, the missing segment vocabulary and value language, the clearance signal a recruiter could not find, and a rewrite plan. Free to scan; no signup to see the score.