Leidos

Chief Engineer – Developer Experience

Leidos

full-time

Posted on:

Location Type: Remote

Location: VirginiaUnited States

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Salary

💰 $154,050 - $278,475 per year

Job Level

About the role

  • Define the platform architecture. Work with the MissionOS Product Owner to design the long-term vision for how infrastructure, runtimes, CI/CD, developer tooling, and self-service portals fit together into a cohesive developer platform.
  • Drive technical direction. Lead build vs. buy evaluations, architectural trade-off decisions, and integration design across multiple platform capabilities (pSDO, LSRE, Quiver, and future tools). You're the deep-dive technical voice that informs product decisions.
  • Partner with engineering teams. Work closely with engineering managers building individual MissionOS capabilities to ensure implementation aligns with the broader platform vision. Talk shop. Review designs. Solve integration challenges.
  • Move fast on emerging needs. Program teams need platform capabilities now. You balance long-term architectural consistency with the urgency of delivering value quickly. You know when to build for the future and when to ship something that works today.
  • Represent platform needs externally. Engage with corporate IT (CIOS), security (CIS), and compliance teams to ensure platform decisions align with enterprise standards, security requirements, and regulatory constraints.
  • Cover security and compliance. Ensure MissionOS platform decisions account for security, compliance, and operational risk. You speak confidently with security teams about how the platform addresses their concerns.
  • Enable self-service at scale. Design infrastructure- and policy-as-code patterns, golden path templates, and developer portal experiences that let teams provision environments, deploy applications, and access services without waiting for tickets.

Requirements

  • Master's degree and 15+ years in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field (Master's preferred)
  • 15+ years of software engineering experience with significant focus on platform engineering, infrastructure, DevOps, or developer tooling
  • Deep hands-on experience designing and building developer platforms—internal developer portals, CI/CD systems, infrastructure-as-code, self-service environments, runtime platforms
  • Strong architectural thinking with proven ability to design systems that balance immediate needs with long-term scalability and maintainability
  • Solid understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) including compute, networking, IAM, and infrastructure services
  • Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, ArgoCD, or equivalent)
  • Proficiency with infrastructure as code (Terraform, Pulumi, AWS CDK, CloudFormation)
  • Familiarity with CI/CD platforms (GitLab, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, CircleCI, or equivalent) and how to design self-service pipelines at scale
  • Strong understanding of security and compliance requirements and satisfying them through policy-as-code in enterprise or regulated environments
  • Excellent communication skills—you can explain complex technical decisions to both engineers and executives
  • U.S. citizenship required; ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance
Benefits
  • Health and Wellness programs
  • Income Protection
  • Paid Leave
  • Retirement
Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard Skills & Tools
platform architectureinfrastructureCI/CDdeveloper toolingself-service portalsinfrastructure-as-codecontainerizationorchestrationsecurity compliancearchitectural design
Soft Skills
communicationleadershipcollaborationproblem-solvingarchitectural thinkingtechnical directiondecision-makingadaptabilitystakeholder engagementstrategic planning
Certifications
Master's degreesecurity clearance