Mr. Stephen P. Welby is the Director, Systems Engineering for the Director, Defense Research and Enginerring, in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. Mr. Welby is responsible for establishing both systems engineering and acquisition technical workforce policy across the Department of Defense (DoD). This includes early systems engineering and pre-acquisition development planning programs; system design, development and manufacturing policy; and independent program review and analysis for more than $60B per year in major weapon system acquisition programs across the Department. As acquisition technical workforce executive, Mr. Welby is the Department's systems planning, research, development, and engineering (SPRDE) functional leader, as well as the production, quality, and manufacturing (PQM) functional leader, together these career fields encompass more than 40,000 DoD avquisition progessionals.

Mr. Welby has more than 22 years of government and industrial experience in cross-disciplinary technological product development, including leadership positions at the Degense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). His areas of focus included technology and program mangagement for development of advanced aeronautical and space systems, high energy lasers, ground and maritime systems, robotics, advanced weapons, high-performance software, real-time signal and image processing, and military sensor systems. Mr. Welby holds a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a master's degree in business administration from the Texas A&M University, and master's degrees in computer science and applied mathematics from The John Hopkins University.