Chief EngineerLeidos
Description
The Chief Engineer serves as the program’s primary technical authority and is accountable for integrated technical success across Agile product development, IT operations, and systems/network engineering. This role leads the Engineering Review Board, ensures cross-functional alignment, and mitigates technical risks across the full lifecycle—from initial requirements through steady-state operations.
Core Responsibilities
1) Technical Authority, Strategy & Governance
Technical delivery accountability: Deliver an integrated technical solution that satisfies requirements per approved plans and the contract; ensure all technical contractual requirements are met.
Architectural integrity: Define and maintain the program “North Star” architecture; ensure Agile development teams don’t create silos that conflict with network or security constraints.
Disciplined engineering processes: Implement disciplined engineering processes and engineering standards (CI/CD, coding practices, network protocols).
Technical baselines & approvals: Establish and maintain formal technical baselines; approve technical plans, work products, and deliverables.
Systems engineering alignment: Execute in accordance with the Systems Engineering Plan (or equivalent) and ensure engineering lifecycle selection is appropriate for the program.
2) Requirements, Design, Integration & Verification
Requirements leadership: Understand technical requirements; direct engineering execution to ensure the solution meets user needs and contract requirements; review functional analyses, requirements analyses, and requirements flow-down.
Design & trade decisions: Review alternative design solutions and trade studies; lead technical design and development.
End-to-end integration: Manage/oversee development, integration, test, and deployment support as required (including coordination across product, infrastructure, and operations).
Verification support: Ensure requirements are satisfied by an integrated and testable solution; support verification of requirements and interfaces via analysis, simulation, and/or test.
Reviews: Lead and participate in formal and informal technical reviews.
3) Cross-Domain Operations & Service Delivery Integration
DevOps/SRE leadership: Bridge Development (Agile squads) and Operations (System/Network administrators) to ensure seamless deployments and high availability.
Interoperability & performance: Ensure system and network engineering designs support low-latency requirements of modern product applications.
Subcontractor technical oversight (as applicable): Monitor subcontractor technical efforts for compliance and performance.
4) Leadership, Performance & Risk Management
Risk management: Contribute to and lead technical risk identification and mitigation across the program lifecycle.
Incident leadership: Lead Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for high-severity incidents across the stack.
Technical debt management: Balance rapid feature delivery with long-term health of the network and system infrastructure.
Program performance visibility: Track and review technical, schedule, and cost performance measures; report status to leadership as appropriate; participate in internal program reviews.
Mentorship/escalation: Serve as the final escalation point for Lead Engineers and Architects across workstreams.
Required Qualifications
Experience: 12+ years in technical leadership roles, including 5+ years overseeing multi-disciplinary engineering teams.
Agile expertise: Deep understanding of scaling Agile frameworks (e.g., SAFe, LeSS) and how they interface with infrastructure milestones.
Network & systems: Proven experience in hybrid-cloud environments and high-availability system design.
Operations knowledge: Familiarity with ITIL or SRE principles (automated monitoring, alerting, incident response).
Security: Experience integrating Security-by-Design into the SDLC and network architecture.
Security Clearance Requirements
Must have: Active Top Secret (TS) clearance with SCI eligibility at time of start.
Must obtain after start: Counterintelligence (CI) polygraph.
Ongoing requirement: Must be able to maintain eligibility for Special Access Program (SAP) access.
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:
April 27, 2026For U.S. Positions: While subject to change based on business needs, Leidos reasonably anticipates that this job requisition will remain open for at least 3 days with an anticipated close date of no earlier than 3 days after the original posting date as listed above.
