Michael Drob is a Chief Engineer supporting program execution, strategy, and growth opportunities across NextGen. He holds an MSEE from Johns Hopkins University and a BSEE from the University of Michigan. He is a certified Neo4j Graph Data Science professional.

As a Technical Lead, Michael supports the Army’s ASTEROID contract, helping develop a Generative AI strategy for RF and standing up a multi-partner pilot to address emerging RF threats. Within NextGen, he also shapes the company’s Generative AI strategy, spanning enterprise and system architecture as well as business strategy. He has spearheaded internal initiatives that leverage Generative AI to enhance software development and business practices, including modernizing engineering workflows, advancing cloud architecture and data engineering, and improving knowledge management and proposal operations.

Michael has served in roles including Principal Lead Scientist for Generative AI at Hawkeye 360, Senior Staff at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Senior Research Scientist at Perspecta Labs, RF Engineer at Raytheon, and manager of an AI/ML consulting practice. He brings experience across software engineering, systems engineering and integration, enterprise and cloud architectures, ML-ops and CI/CD, and scalable AI/ML applications. He has supported the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, DARPA, NGA, and international customers.