Senior Software Engineer (AI-Enabled Platforms & Tools)Leidos
Description
This is not a maintenance role. This is a reinvention role.
Leidos is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design, build, and sustain AI-enabled software platforms and developer tools that support modernization of mission-critical systems.
This role moves beyond delivering individual features to owning parts of the system. A Senior Software Engineer makes solid technical decisions, contributes to design work, and provides technical continuity on the team while working closely with senior and principal engineers.
This is a hands-on senior engineering role with meaningful design responsibility and delivery accountability.
This is a role for builders who bias toward action, who believe disruption can coexist with rigor, and who want to apply cutting-edge AI to the problems that matter most.
Mission Context
Our teams develop software systems that support critical national missions across regulated and safety-critical domains.
These systems require:
- High reliability, security, and resilience
- Thoughtful modernization of legacy architectures
- Responsible and governed application of AI capabilities
As a Senior Software Engineer, you will own and evolve key subsystems that enable these outcomes, ensuring solutions are robust, maintainable, and production-ready.
Why Join Us?
- Work on real, mission-critical systems—not experimental demos
- Gain hands-on experience with AI-enabled software in production environments
- Learn from senior and principal engineers while maintaining meaningful ownership
- Build a long-term technical career with a clear and structured growth path
Key Responsibilities
Technical Design & Implementation
- Own the design and implementation of complex features or subsystems within established architectures
- Translate high-level requirements into detailed technical designs and implementation plans
- Develop and maintain high-quality software using modern programming languages such as Python, Java, Go, or TypeScript
- Ensure solutions meet defined standards for quality, security, performance, and reliability
AI-Enabled Systems (Applied Design & Execution)
- Design and implement AI-enabled features using approved frameworks, models, and patterns, including:
- API-based AI integrations
- Prompt- and workflow-driven AI capabilities
- Retrieval- or data-assisted application components
- Evaluate and improve AI-assisted behavior using established testing, validation, and review practices
- Apply AI safety, governance, and review mechanisms consistently across owned components
Platform & Cloud Contributions
- Design, develop, and support services deployed in cloud-native environments
- Contribute to containerized applications, CI/CD pipelines, and operational tooling
- Troubleshoot and resolve complex application- and service-level issues
- Partner with platform, security, and infrastructure teams to deliver scalable and reliable solutions
Technical Leadership & Collaboration
- Provide technical guidance and mentorship to T2/T3 engineers through code reviews, pairing, and design discussions
- Act as a go-to engineer for assigned subsystems or domains
- Participate actively in cross-team technical discussions and design reviews
- Influence engineering best practices through example and constructive feedback
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field and 8+ years of relevant software engineering experience. May consider additional experience in lieu of degree.
- Strong proficiency in at least one modern programming language (e.g., Python, Java, Go, TypeScript)
- Demonstrated experience designing and delivering complex features or subsystems
- Experience with:
- Service-based or microservice architectures
- RESTful APIs
- Software testing and CI/CD pipelines
- Familiarity with:
- Containers (Docker)
- Kubernetes or similar orchestration platforms
- Cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
- Ability to work independently on complex problems with minimal supervision
- Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across teams
- Must be authorized to work in the U.S.
Preferred Qualifications
- Professional experience working with AI/ML or LLM-enabled systems
- Experience working in regulated, secure, or mission-critical environments
- Experience contributing to platform engineering, developer tooling, or system modernization initiatives
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:
January 29, 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.
