Senior Software Engineer

Lead Technology Behind a Mission That Matters

Great software engineering is about more than writing code, it’s about solving difficult problems, making smart technical decisions, and building capabilities people can depend on. Leidos is seeking an accomplished Senior Software Engineer to join the Chinook Program supporting an Intelligence Community (IC) customer and an application with direct national security impact.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll be a key technical leader, shaping software architecture, solving complex engineering challenges, and helping drive the evolution of critical application capabilities. You’ll remain hands-on while influencing technical direction, mentoring engineers, and collaborating with architects, systems engineers, DevSecOps, test professionals, and mission stakeholders.

The Senior Engineer is responsible for complex software development, technical design, integration, troubleshooting, and engineering leadership. You’ll take ownership of significant technical areas and provide technical direction to other engineers while remaining hands-on with development.

Position may be performed in the following locations below.

• Tucson, AZ

• Gaithersburg, MD

• Alexandria, VA

• Chantilly, VA

• Englewood, CO

• St. Louis, MO

Clearance Level Required:

Active Top Secret/SCI with the ability to successfully pass a Polygraph examination.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Lead the design, development, integration, testing, deployment, and sustainment of a software application that supports our customer’s GEOINT mission.

• Translate mission, systems, and technical requirements into scalable software solutions.

• Lead technical design for application components, services, APIs, and integrations.

• Develop and maintain high-quality production software.

• Design and implement scalable backend services and modern web applications.

• Evaluate architectural approaches and recommend solutions based on mission and technical requirements.

• Develop and integrate RESTful APIs, microservices, and data services.

• Design and optimize database schemas, queries, and data-access strategies.

• Troubleshoot complex application, integration, performance, and production issues.

• Lead root-cause analysis for significant technical problems.

• Develop automated unit, integration, and system-level testing strategies.

• Support CI/CD, DevSecOps, cloud, and containerized environments.

• Identify and address technical debt, reliability issues, scalability limitations, and security concerns.

• Serve as a Scrum Master for an Agile software development team, facilitating sprint planning, daily standups, backlog refinement, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.

• Partner with Product Owners and development team members to manage sprint priorities, remove impediments, and support the timely delivery of high-quality software capabilities.

• Promote Agile best practices, foster team collaboration, and drive continuous improvement in sprint execution, team efficiency, and software delivery.

• Provide mentorship and guidance to junior engineers.

• Collaborate closely with Test Engineering, DevSecOps, Systems Engineering, Security, and mission stakeholders.

• Support production releases and operational troubleshooting.

• Evaluate emerging technologies and determine their applicability to mission needs.

• Contribute to technical documentation, engineering standards, and development roadmaps.

Basic Qualifications:

• US citizenship is required per contract.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field and 8-12 years of prior relevant experience or Master’s with 6-10 years of prior relevant experience. May possess a Doctorate in technical domain. Equivalent experience may be considered in lieu of degree.

• Proficiency with the following technologies:

o Web: HTML, CSS, JSON, Ajax, and REST APIs

o Object-oriented Programming: Python, Java, or JavaScript

o Front-end and Back-end Frameworks: React, Angular, Vue.js, jQuery, Spring Boot, Django, Node.js, Flask, or Svelte

o Cloud Development: AWS, Azure, or similar cloud platforms

o Relational Database: MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server

o Operating System: Windows, Linux

o Version Control System: Git

• Strong experience with software architecture and application design.

• Strong experience developing APIs, services, and/or distributed applications.

• Strong database development and data-modeling experience.

• Experience with modern DevSecOps and CI/CD practices.

• Experience troubleshooting complex production and integration issues.

• Experience serving as a Scrum Master or performing Scrum Master responsibilities within an Agile software development team.

• Demonstrated understanding of Agile methodologies, Scrum ceremonies, sprint planning, backlog management, and iterative software delivery.

• Experience using Agile project management tools such as Jira and Confluence to track sprint progress, manage work items, and support team collaboration.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience supporting Intelligence Community (IC) mission systems.

• Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Professional Scrum Master (PSM), or equivalent Agile certification.

• Experience balancing hands-on software engineering responsibilities with Scrum Master duties on a cross-functional Agile team.

• Experience using Agile metrics, including sprint velocity, burndown charts, and cycle time, to identify opportunities for improved team performance.

• Experience with geospatial, intelligence, or other mission-specific data and workflows.

• Experience with AWS and cloud-native architectures.

• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, Ansible, CloudFormation).

• Experience with GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, SonarQube, Nexus, Vault, or Keycloak.

• Experience with PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, OpenSearch/Elasticsearch, or similar technologies.

• Experience with event-driven architectures and messaging technologies.

• Experience with observability, monitoring, logging, and application performance management.

#Chinook

#NSBA

If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo — because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 — and moving faster than anyone else dares.

Original Posting:

October 15, 2026

Pay Range:

Pay Range $107,900.00 - $195,050.00

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.