Description
The Leidos Digital Modernization Sector seeks a Data Software Technical Lead with Elastic and Kafka experience to support the Innovations Group on our GSM-O II Program as a technical lead in the End to End Visualization Tenet. The Leidos Digital Modernization Sector provides a diverse portfolio of systems, solutions, and services covering land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace for customers worldwide. Solutions for Defense include enterprise and mission IT, large-scale intelligence systems, command and control, geospatial and data analytics, cybersecurity, logistics, training, and intelligence analysis and operations support. Our team is solving the world’s toughest security challenges for customers with “can’t fail” missions.
Candidate must be within driving distance of Scott AFB. At a minimum, a Secret clearance is required upon the start of employment and within 14 days following the start date the employee must obtain their Security + certification.
The ideal candidate brings knowledge in streaming data architectures, cloud-native technologies, and platform engineering, and thrives in guiding teams through technical delivery. This role involves leading design, development, and implementation of secure, scalable data solutions. The candidate will preferably have experience in Defense Information Systems Network (DISN) environments with a background in Systems Engineering, Solution Architecture, Network Engineering, or Software Development to apply their expertise to support complex data integration and interoperability efforts across the project within DoD network infrastructures.
As a key End to End Visualization team member, you will be leading technical design and implementation for a variety of solution capabilities to integrating various data sources into Confluent (Kafka) and Elastic platforms, leading the design of robust data integration solutions, and adhering to the program’s CI/CD processes and data governance practices. You will lead a fast paced, Agile development and implementation team to architect, design and develop data integration solutions (Extract, Transform, Load) to support a unified User Experience / User Interface (UX/UI) that provides a holistic single-pane-of-glass interface for an integrated solution on the Elastic platform. You will also work with operational end users and support teams to perform requirements analysis, as well as design, develop and demonstrate mockups and wireframes.
Primary Responsibilities
The successful candidate primary responsibility will:
- Lead and manage team capacity and workload prioritization.
- Lead a team of analysist, engineers, developers, and testers focused on DISN operations data, Network reliability, availability and observability.
- Lead solution implementation using Confluent Kafka, Elastic Stack, AWS, and Red Hat OpenShift (Kubernetes).
- Partner with product owners, architects, and cross-functional leaders to ensure delivery aligns with strategic goals.
- Lead the development and maintenance of middleware, APIs, and data pipelines to enable interoperability across disparate systems.
- Apply expertise in network security, transport protocols, and DISN architectures to ensure compliance with DoD cybersecurity and data governance policies.
- Leverage AI/ML techniques to optimize data processing, anomaly detection, predictive analytics, and automation in data integration workflows.
- Lead and enforce strong data governance practices, ensuring data accuracy, security, and compliance with DoD and industry regulations.
- Troubleshoot and optimize data flows, network configurations, and system performance issues.
- Research, design, develop and user-test experience and maki strategic user-experience decisions while working closely with product owners, engineers and stakeholders throughout the product lifecycle.
- Create Kafka, Elastic, Logstash data pipelines and support Kibana visualizations and dashboards using React, JavaScript and HTML.
- Design, develop, document, test and deploy applications and prototypes in JavaScript, HTML and CSS on the Elastic platform.
- Integrating ETL components with CI/CD build/deployment pipelines that use Cloudbees/Jenkins, Artifactory, OpenShift/Kubernetes, Docker and Bitbucket.
- Designing, development, documenting, testing and deploying applications.
Basic Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college in a relevant technical discipline and 8+ year of related experience obtained through any combination of coursework and internships.
- Must have an active DoD Secret Security clearance.
- Ability to obtain Security+ certification or equivalent DoD 8570 IAT II certification within 14 days of start date.
- Must be able to commute to Scott AFB, IL two/three times per week for on-site support.
- Proven leadership experience managing technical teams, ideally in data engineering, DevOps, or platform operations.
- Strong hands-on knowledge of Confluent Kafka, including schema management, stream processing, and Kafka Connect.
- Experience with Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) for logging, monitoring, and observability.
- Prior experience with implementing enterprise data lakes, ETL pipelines, and distributed data architectures.
- Proficient in AWS services relevant to data platforms (e.g., EC2, S3, Kinesis, Lambda, IAM, CloudWatch).
- Experience deploying and managing workloads in OpenShift or Kubernetes-based environments.
- Familiarity with infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, and container orchestration best practices.
- Effectively managing remotely with a geographically dispersed team.
- Working knowledge of DISA STIGs, RMF, and other DoD compliance frameworks.
- Strong background in data governance, metadata management, and data quality frameworks.
- Develop DoD requirements, traceability, and detailed plans/schedules.
- Lead development of software systems engineering documents and interface documents (IDDs/ICDs)
- Strong understanding of DoD network infrastructure, security requirements, and data exchange protocols.
- Experience in application integration design and strong communication skills for collaboration with virtual teams.
- Proficiency in data integration technologies, APIs, message brokers, and middleware solutions.
- Experience with network security, encryption, and access controls in classified and unclassified environments.
- Prior experience in big data analytics or cybersecurity solutions within a DISN environment
- Background in observability platforms, incident response, or real-time analytics.
- Software development experience with Python, Java and SQL. Working knowledge of HTML and JavaScript.
- Experience with distributed version control software such as Git and Bitbucket.
- Knowledge of and ability to apply principles, theories, and concepts of Software Engineering.
- 6+ years of demonstrable experience designing, developing and deploying dashboards and reports using the Elastic stack, including Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana and Beats.
- Experience in architecture, design, develop, and delivery of data driven operations capabilities, within a DoD environment.
- Experience using project management tools such as Jira and Confluence to document requirements, acceptance criteria and test cases.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills to collaborate with and convey focused messages to stakeholders, customers, domain experts, program managers and teammates.
Preferred Qualifications
- Deep understanding of DISN networks with a technical background in Systems Engineering, Solution Architecture, Network Engineering, or Software Development within a specific technical area
- Experience developing and deploying software in a DoD environment (DISA experience is a plus), including experience building and deploying software applications that meet DoD security standards, including updating applications and code to meet security scans and meeting security implementation guidelines (e.g. STIGs).
- Experience in data technologies like Kafka, Elastic, Spark, NiFi.
- Familiarity with AWS GovCloud and cloud infrastructure, including networking and security policies.
- Experience in developing software detailed designs, particularly in ksql or kstreams.
- Experience with Agile methodologies and related tools. Experience with Atlassian tools, including JIRA and Confluence.
- Working knowledge of programming languages such as Python, Java, and SQL
- Experience with distributed version control software such as Git and Bitbucket.
- ETL Kafka/Elastic/Kibana Engineer.
- Experience with data Visualization and dashboards
- Knowledge with Elastic stack security features, such as client authentication, SSL/TLS configuration, and role-based document filtering.
- Software design and development experience with JavaScript, HTML, CSS and JSON/REST APIs in a cloud environment (AWS is a plus).
- Experience developing, building and deploying software using Bitbucket, Git, Jenkins, Artifactory and Ansible (or equivalent tools).
- Experience developing and deploying software in a DoD environment (DISA experience is a plus), including experience building and deploying software applications that meet DoD security standards.
- Experience or familiarity with Agile development and testing methodology
- Experience with DISA and DoD Networks.
- Experience with big data applications
- Experience with DevOps/DevSecOps, Configuration as Code, Infrastructure as Code, and CI/CD implementation
- Understanding of network routing devices and network device configurations
Come break things (in a good way). Then build them smarter.
We're the tech company everyone calls when things get weird. We don’t wear capes (they’re a safety hazard), but we do solve high-stakes problems with code, caffeine, and a healthy disregard for “how it’s always been done.”
Original Posting:
August 4, 2025
For 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.
Pay Range:
Pay Range $104,650.00 - $189,175.00
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.
