Flight Software Development Lead

The Huntsville Defense Sector Engineering Matrix in the Leidos Defense Sector currently has a special job opening for a talented Flight and Mission Software Development Lead to work onsite in our Huntsville, AL office. This is an exciting and unusual opportunity to use your knowledge, skills, experience, and insight to launch the next phase of your career at Leidos by leading a talented software team through the software development life cycle (SDLC) to produce solutions for the nation’s leading advanced defense technologies such as manned aircraft software, tactical strike systems, sensors, computer vision, uncrewed air systems (UAS), counter UAS, mission planning, command/control/communications (C3), platform autonomy, network collaborative autonomy, aerial refueling, and flight management systems.

Leidos is dedicated to making the world a safer place. This starts with helping our customers in the Defense Industry achieve their critical missions. Our dedicated Defense Group employees are solving critical challenges across the globe. At Leidos, we deliver innovative solutions through the efforts of our diverse and talented people who are dedicated to our customers’ success.  We empower our teams, contribute to our communities, and operate sustainably. Everything we do is built on a commitment to do the right thing for our customers, our people, and our community. Our Mission, Vision, and Values guide the way we do business. With offices across the United States engaging in the defense, space, cyber and commercial fields, Leidos provides responsive, cost-effective engineering, scientific and IT solutions. Leidos is well known for our people-oriented culture, positive work environment, technical excellence, and resilient business ethics. 

Primary Responsibilities.

• This leadership position is dynamic, requiring assertiveness, strong technical competence, flexibility, impeccable prioritization abilities, personal drive and energy, and self-discipline. Working in this position, your workday will span jobs such as leading a Software Integrated Product Team (IPT), working across technical functions on cohesive integrated solutions on complex integrated systems, providing software program management, working closely with software and computing hardware architects, overseeing software systems engineers and lead software test engineers, and serving as Agile Product Owner.
• Product development will span the technology stack from high-level user applications to mission software to low-level embedded solutions to the computing hardware. Hardware may span front end tablets and laptops, rugged mission computers, high-performance servers, single-board computers (SBC), systems-on-chip (SoC), systems-on-module (SoM), custom printed circuit board assemblies (PCBA), and microcontrollers (MCU). Software capabilities span criticality levels and perform functions such as mission execution, power and thermal monitoring, sensors and instrumentation, telemetry, command and control, communications, networks, mission planning, and system infrastructures.
• This position will involve regular and direct contributions to proposals. This includes devising technical solutions, determining the approach to execution, schedule planning, software size and cost estimation, developing basis of estimates, team sizing, skills and staff planning, computer hardware and software requirements elicitation and analysis, and materiel planning.
• Direct communication with customers, end users, internal stakeholders, and team members will be required on a frequent basis.
• In this position you will enjoy significant influence on positive outcomes and a strong sense of purpose working directly on fieldable systems that are key to the nation’s defense.

Basic Qualifications.

• A Bachelor's Degree or higher degree in Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Management Information Systems, Computer Information Systems, Electrical Engineering, Aeronautical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, or a related technical field is required.
• Candidate should have 12+ years of relevant technical experience.
• Candidate should have 3+ years or relevant experience leading teams and managing resources for software development.
• Excellent communication (verbal and written) and team leadership skills.
• Candidate must demonstrate their ability to work independently, collaborate closely with team members, discern efficient roles and tasks for their team members, think critically, act confidently and judiciously, exercise impeccable judgement, consistently make rational decisions, and impart a productive sense of urgency to others.
• Experience in development of software products or simulations using C, C++, Rust, C#, or Java is required. Candidate must articulate strong competency in development in at least one of these programming languages, object-oriented design principles, and troubleshooting.
• Experience working on one or more final products that went beyond prototypes, demonstrations, test beds, or internal/lab use only. The candidate’s prior experience must exist on software products, integrated systems, or simulations that were released and fielded as either a product itself, used operationally on an integrated system, or released and used independently by individuals other than those who developed it.
• Proficient with efficient use of peer reviews and evaluations of software development plans, specifications, requirements management, architectures, designs, source code, unit tests, verification plans and procedures.
• Familiar with practices associated with successful software supplier or subcontractor management, and basic contract requirements methodology (e.g., SOWs, SLAs, and CDRLs).
• Fundamental and working knowledge of software configuration management, code repositories and build system components, such as DevSecOps, CI/CD pipelines, CMake, GitLab, Docker, and virtualization tools (e.g., VMWare, QEMU, VirtualBox, Hyper-V).
• Fundamental and working knowledge of general-purpose operating systems (Linux, UNIX, and/or Windows) and practical knowledge of their respective development tools/IDEs, scripts, debuggers, and administrative features.
• Understanding of the software development life cycle, its phases, life cycle models, metrics or performance indicators, and techniques for rapid development while ensuring high-quality solutions and on-time results.
• Able to multi-task and willing to work with teammates to contribute directly to industry events, white papers and competitive proposals.
• Basic understanding of software engineering process and the appropriateness of its use, application, and proper methods of tailoring.
• Basic understanding of systems engineering principles and practices relevant to software.

Clearance Qualification.

• Candidate must be a U.S. Citizen with the ability to obtain and maintain a Secret Security Clearance (interim and final).

Preferred Experience, Skills or Abilities.

• Software Development: Experience with planning, specification, design, development, integration, installation/deployment, and maintenance of software for airborne systems, mission planning systems, missile/weapon platforms, uncrewed or autonomous systems, and/or ground control/support systems.
• User Experience Programming Languages: Basic knowledge in one or more programming languages used in applications and front-end software, such as Python, .NET/C#, Java, C++, Qt, Swift/Objective-C, and XML.
• Agile Development: Experience with SAFe as Product Owner, Scrum Master, or Developer performing software product development using Agile development methodologies within one or more Agile tools such as Atlassian Jira, Trello, Monday.com.
• Agentic AI: Experience using and influencing the adoption of tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code, OpenAI’s Codex or other coding agents to improve efficiency and productivity.
• Problem-Solving: Ability to comprehend changes, characterize impact and assess risk to plans or existing solutions, estimate their level of effort and resources, describe (written and verbal) courses of action (COA) or decision analysis, and facilitate team consensus.
• Collaboration: Work responsibly, reliably and independently in a fast-paced, open, collaborative cross-functional cross-organizational environment without direct oversight.
• Transparency: Elicit, accept, and provide constructive informal feedback amongst other team members to uphold technical excellence and quality workmanship.

Other Qualifications

• Rapid Flight Systems Development. Experience with Agile/Scrum, unmanned aircraft or robotics, embedded development, design and implementation of operational flight software, digital communications, real-time development, and software safety.
• Qualification Testing. Knowledge of various development tools for software qualification testing, requirements management, build and release, unit testing, regression testing, configuration management, and issue tracking are beneficial.
• Mission Support: Devise new concepts for computing infrastructure and automation to support ground test facilities, integration labs, data collection and analysis, autonomous logistics, and operator training.
• Embedded Software: Understanding of fundamentals of critical or time-sensitive software for integrated systems, such as real-time software, hardware-in-the-loop simulation, vehicles, medical devices, or IoT components.
• Specialized Areas: Experience with autonomous systems, electrical and software interface design, interface control documents, or avionics is beneficial.

AppKinetic

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:

September 18, 2026

Pay Range:

Pay Range $131,300.00 - $237,350.00

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.