Clyde Chittister served as the president of the IEEE Systems Council from 2008 to 2011. He also served as the Vice President of Finance, and was a member of the Chair Nominations Committee. He is also a former Senior Member of IEEE and was the vice chair of the Technical Committee on Software Engineering. He worked for the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University for more than 25 years and rose to the role of chief operating officer, where his key responsibilities were creating and executing the institute's operating plan and focusing on the SEI's internal operations.