Principal Software Engineer

Program Summary

This is a large, multi-year Leidos-led prime contract supporting the development, integration, deployment, and sustainment of large collection systems. The work performed on this program is mission-critical to the government and focused on solving complex technical challenges within emerging technologies.

Team members operate with autonomy while contributing to a highly technical environment delivering impactful, mission-relevant solutions.

Job Summary

Leidos is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to design, implement, and enhance distributed application orchestration in a cloud-native environment. This role requires a senior engineer who contributes to architectural direction, leads development of scalable deployment solutions, and mentors team members while promoting best practices. The ideal candidate demonstrates ownership of system components, helps guide technical decisions and tradeoffs, contributes to shared tooling and standards, and applies a systems-level mindset across the platform.

Primary Responsibilities

• Design scalable workflows for deploying and managing Kubernetes-native applications

• Lead development of reusable Helm charts, GitOps templates, and deployment strategies

• Build system-aware controllers or agents to automate application lifecycle tasks

• Contribute to platform-wide architecture decisions, including deployment strategy, multi-cluster configuration, and observability

• Mentor junior engineers and conduct code reviews to ensure reliability, clarity, and best practices

• Collaborate with DevOps and platform teams to support secure and compliant deployments

• Help shape internal standards, shared tooling, and technical direction through design guidance and tradeoff analysis

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or similar technical discipline with 20 or more years of related experience

• Deep experience with Go or Python in cloud-native environments

• Strong Kubernetes experience, including CRDs, Helm, GitOps, and multi-tenant application deployments

• Experience with event-driven or agent-based systems (e.g., Kafka, controller patterns)

• Familiarity with infrastructure automation tools such as Terraform, cloud-init, or Ansible

• Experience working in complex environments balancing automation with operator oversight

• Demonstrated ability to lead technical efforts and contribute to system-level design decisions

• Clearance Requirement: Active TS/SCI with polygraph required