Software Engineer

About the Role

The Leidos Office of Technology is seeking Software Engineers with AI and autonomy experience to help build a common technology platform. In this role, you will design, build, and operate production software for AI-driven and autonomous systems. You will work in small, accountable build-and-run teams, using modern AI-assisted development practices to ship faster and at higher quality. Your work will support national security and other critical missions where reliability, security, and human oversight matter.

Location: The ideal candidate will be based in Northern Virginia or near another Leidos facility, such as Huntsville, AL, or San Diego, CA. Onsite work at a Leidos facility is required as business needs dictate.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and build AI agents and reasoning services, including LLM-based agents, planning, and inference, with human oversight, auditability, and fail-safe behavior built in.
• Develop autonomy software and integrate it with sensors, platforms, and hardware across edge and cloud environments.
• Design and develop platform software, including APIs and SDKs, data and knowledge services, and user-facing applications.
• Package components as reusable, secure, well-documented assets that others can adopt without rework.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and release evidence (SBOM, provenance, signing) that support secure release and deployment.
• Own what you build in production, including observability, reliability, and incident response.
• Contribute to engineering standards, reusable patterns, and technical-debt reduction across the platform.
• Collaborate with program teams and architects to turn customer needs into repeatable capabilities.
• Use AI-assisted development tools (coding assistants, agentic workflows, automated review and test generation) in daily engineering, and help teams adopt them effectively and responsibly.
• Help evaluate emerging AI, autonomy, and developer-productivity technologies, and scale what works.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Hands-on software development experience in one or more modern languages such as Python, C++, Rust, Java, Go, or TypeScript.
• Experience (professional, academic, or personal projects) building AI/ML-enabled or autonomous systems, such as LLM agents, robotics, perception, planning, or sensor-driven software.
• Working knowledge of Git-based workflows, CI/CD, automated testing, and DevSecOps practices.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, or comparable) and the ability to quickly adopt new tools.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work effectively in small, cross-functional teams.
• U.S. citizenship and the ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret security clearance.

Qualifications

• We are hiring software engineers at all levels, from junior through senior, with opportunities tailored to individual experience and expertise in AI-enabled software development.
• Early career level: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field, combined with 4+ years of experience. (Additional years of experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.)
• Mid level: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field, combined with 8+ years of experience. (Additional years of experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.)
• Senior level: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field, combined with 12+ years of experience. (Additional years of experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.)

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building AI/ML-enabled systems, including LLM agents, agent frameworks, evaluation harnesses, or retrieval and data pipelines.
• Experience with autonomy or robotics software, including perception, planning, control, sensor fusion, simulation, ROS 2, or DDS.
• Experience with edge and embedded systems, real-time or deterministic software, Linux and real-time operating systems, or GPU/accelerator programming.
• Experience designing APIs, SDKs, or developer platforms, including extensible component architectures, developer experience, platform engineering, or software modernization.
• Experience with cloud and container technologies (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud; Docker, Kubernetes) and infrastructure as code.
• Familiarity with secure software supply chain practices, static analysis, and security scanning tools (e.g., SonarQube, Fortify, Checkmarx).
• Understanding of responsible AI practices for assured autonomy, including human-in-the-loop control, audit trails, and IP and data-handling considerations in AI-assisted development.
• Background supporting federal, defense, intelligence, or homeland security missions, and an active Top Secret clearance.