Leidos

Principal Software Engineer, AI Development

Leidos

full-time

Posted on:

Location Type: Remote

Location: United States

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Salary

💰 $154,050 - $278,475 per year

Job Level

About the role

  • Provide Thought leadership in the future opportunities in AI and agentic-enabled tools, capabilities, and challenges
  • Serve as the architectural lead for AI- and agentic-enabled tooling, establishing patterns, reference implementations, and best practices.
  • Design scalable, secure, and resilient software systems that integrate LLMs, multi-agent workflows, code intelligence, and automation.
  • Own and drive the technical roadmap for next-generation software acceleration tools—including IDE extensions, code-analysis agents, refactoring engines, and developer-assistive AI.
  • Lead architecture reviews, evaluate new technologies, and set engineering standards for AI safety, quality, reliability, and observability.
  • Build high-quality software with modern languages and frameworks (e.g., Python, TypeScript, Go, Java).
  • Develop pipelines and services that enable AI reasoning, code analysis, static/dynamic analysis, and automated transformation of legacy systems.
  • Prototype early concepts rapidly and transition successful prototypes into robust, production systems.
  • Integrate AI/ML models (commercial, open-source, or custom) into enterprise environments and developer workflows.
  • Design and build agentic orchestration, tool-use interfaces, embeddings systems, context windows, and retrieval-augmented workflows.
  • Implement “human-in-the-loop” safety and review patterns.
  • Develop mechanisms for grounding, guardrailing, and evaluating AI performance and correctness.
  • Leverage AI to analyze, modernize, and refactor large, complex codebases (e.g., Java, .NET, COBOL, C++).
  • Partner with product, UX, and platform teams to define features, user journeys, and developer experience goals.
  • Act as a technical mentor to senior and mid-level engineers; cultivate a culture of excellence and continuous learning.
  • Collaborate closely with research, data, and cybersecurity teams to ensure solutions are safe, secure, and aligned with mission needs.
  • Represent the engineering team in internal and external forums, contributing to thought leadership in AI and software engineering modernization.

Requirements

  • 15+ years experience in software engineering
  • Expertise in designing and building distributed systems, developer tools, or platform engineering products
  • Hands-on experience implementing AI/ML systems or integrating large language models into production workflows
  • Strong knowledge of agentic frameworks, orchestration tools, RAG, vector databases, API design, and microservices
  • Deep understanding of software design patterns, CI/CD, DevSecOps, and cloud-native architectures (AWS/Azure/GCP)
  • Strong coding proficiency in at least two modern languages (Python, Go, Java, C#, etc.)
  • Ability to drive technical strategy, influence cross-functional teams, and communicate complex ideas clearly
  • Must be authorized to work in the U.S.
Benefits
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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools
PythonTypeScriptGoJavaC#AI/ML systemslarge language modelsdistributed systemssoftware design patternsCI/CD
Soft Skills
thought leadershiptechnical mentorshipcommunicationinfluence cross-functional teamsdrive technical strategycollaborationcultivate culture of excellencecontinuous learning