Chief Engineer, Developer Experience

Wanted: The platform engineer who turns a collection of tools into a cohesive platformand makes it look inevitable.

Leidos is building MissionOS: the unified platform that will power how thousands of engineers build deploy and operate mission-critical software across the enterprise.

This isnt about stitching together a few CI/CD pipelines. This is about designing the infrastructure runtimes developer tooling and self-service capabilities that become the foundation for every software team at Leidos. This is about creating golden paths that make it easy to do the right thingand nearly impossible to do the wrong thing.

This role exists because platforms dont design themselves. Tools proliferate. Architectures drift. Teams optimize locally and integrate painfully. And without a principal-level engineer focused on the big picture you end up with a pile of capabilities instead of a platform.

Youll be the engineer who fixes thatby defining what MissionOS needs to be then working relentlessly to make it real.

Why This Role Matters
MissionOS isnt just another platform initiative. Its the foundation for how Leidos builds software for the next decade.

This role is about ensuring we dont just accumulate toolswe build a platform that makes engineering teams faster safer and more effective. Youll shape technical decisions that affect thousands of developers and define what modern software delivery means at Leidos.

Youll work at the intersection of long-term vision and immediate execution. Youll partner with a sharp product owner and talented engineering teams to turn ambition into reality. And youll have the scope autonomy and organizational support to make a lasting impact.

If youre the engineer who sees the platform others dont yet and knows how to build it this is your role.

What Youll Do
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). Youre 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.

Who You Are
An architect who codes. You think clearly about large-scale system architecture but youre not afraid to get your hands dirty. You can whiteboard a vision then open a terminal and prove it works.
A systems thinker. You see how CI/CD infrastructure security observability and developer experience interact. You design for the whole system not just individual components.
Pragmatic and delivery-focused. You balance perfect with good enough to ship. You know when to invest in long-term architecture and when to solve the immediate problem and iterate later.
A technical peer to engineering managers. You can engage deeply with teams building platform capabilities talk shop about implementation details and earn respect through technical credibility.
Comfortable operating at multiple altitudes. You can zoom out to discuss long-term platform strategy with executives then zoom in to debug a Kubernetes manifest with an engineer. You move fluidly between vision and execution.
Experienced with security and compliance. You understand what CIOS and CIS care about. You know how to design platforms that satisfy security requirements without crushing developer productivity.

What Youll Face
A platform that needs to support diverse workloadsfrom AI/ML systems to edge autonomy to traditional enterprise applications.
Pressure to deliver value quickly while building for long-term scale and sustainability.
Multiple existing capabilities that need to evolve integrate or potentially retire as MissionOS matures.
Security and compliance requirements that cant be ignored but also cant slow anything down.
Engineering teams optimizing for their immediate needs without seeing the broader platform picture.
And stillyoull deliver. Because you know how to build platforms that matter.

Your Technical Impact
Define the technical architecture for MissionOS platformthe infrastructure tooling and self-service capabilities that enable thousands of engineers to build mission-critical software faster and more reliably.
Drive build vs. buy decisions integration strategies and architectural evolution across CI/CD infrastructure-as-code developer portals and runtime platforms. Establish patterns for secure compliant self-service developer experiencesfrom environment provisioning to deployment pipelines to observability.
Ensure MissionOS platform meets enterprise security compliance and operational standards while remaining developer-friendly.
Work with engineering teams to evolve existing capabilities (pSDO LSRE Quiver) into a unified cohesive platform experience.
Help Leidos transition from fragmented tooling to golden paths that make the right way the easy way

Required Qualifications
Masters degree and 15 years in Computer Science Software Engineering or related technical field (Masters 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 platformsinternal 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. Ability to engage credibly with security teams about platform risk SBOM management vulnerability scanning and secure-by-design principles.
Excellent communication skillsyou can explain complex technical decisions to both engineers and executives.
U.S. citizenship required; ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance.

Preferred Qualifications
Prior experience building platforms in defense aerospace or federal government contexts with familiarity with FedRAMP RMF or DoD IL4/5/6 requirements.
Experience with developer portal platforms like Backstage Port or custom-built internal portals.
Hands-on experience with Agile tooling (Jira Azure DevOps) and integration with developer workflows.
Background in DevSecOps software supply chain security or application security.
Experience evaluating procuring and integrating third-party developer tools at enterprise scale.
Exposure to AI-enabled development workflows or platform support for AI/ML workloads.

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

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Pay Range:

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline onlyand 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.