Engineering Lead, Inner Developer Loop

Leidos

About The Position

Leidos is seeking an Engineering Lead to transform the inner developer loop for thousands of engineers building mission-critical software. This role involves leading a team to completely reimagine the developer experience, from workstation setup to integration of AI-powered development tools, with the goal of reducing onboarding time from weeks to a single hour. The position focuses on building and shipping systems, environments, and experiences that demonstrate world-class developer productivity within a large, complex, and security-constrained organization. It is explicitly stated that this is not an IT, DevOps, or tools evangelism role, but rather a hands-on leadership position focused on delivering tangible improvements to developer workflows and establishing best practices for developer experience at an enterprise scale, particularly within national security contexts. The successful candidate will be responsible for the entire end-to-end experience, ensuring engineers can focus on mission software rather than tooling issues.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree and 12+ years in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field (Master's preferred). Additional years experience may be used in lieu of degree.
12+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, including experience building or owning developer tooling, platform engineering, or internal developer experience systems.
Experience leading small technical teams—you've owned outcomes as a tech lead or engineering lead, not just contributed to them.
Deep expertise in at least one relevant domain: systems/platform engineering, DevOps, developer tooling, workstation management, or infrastructure—with working fluency across multiple domains.
Hands-on experience with enterprise developer environment tooling: endpoint management (e.g., Jamf, Intune, or similar), identity and access management, package management, CI/CD pipelines, and container runtimes.
Proven experience using AI coding tools (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Sourcegraph Cody, etc.) in real development workflows—not just demos.
Strong understanding of software quality practices: testing strategies, code review, CI/CD, and how to maintain quality while moving fast.
Excellent communication skills—you can work across engineering teams, security teams, and IT operations, and translate between all of them.
Familiarity with secure software development practices, especially in regulated or compliance-heavy environments (bonus: experience with FedRAMP, DoD IL4/5, RMF).
U.S. citizenship required; ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance.

Nice To Haves

Demonstrated leadership in enterprise-scale engineering transformation (DevEx, platform engineering, CI/CD modernization, or large-scale tooling adoption) with measurable improvement in DORA or SPACE metrics.
Proven experience embedding within delivery teams as a senior technical change agent, influencing without authority and driving sustained workflow transformation.
Hands-on experience operationalizing AI-augmented software development practices beyond individual productivity— establishing team-level patterns for code review, testing, and architecture.
Experience delivering mission-critical software in regulated environments (DoD, IC, FedRAMP High, IL5/6) where security, compliance, and velocity must coexist.
Strong architectural depth in distributed, cloud-native systems and DevSecOps automation at scale.
Experience building or contributing to internal developer platforms, paved roads, or enterprise engineering standards.
Recognized technical credibility (e.g., principal/staff-level scope, open-source contributions, conference speaking, or internal technical leadership).

Responsibilities

Lead a team building the inner dev loop.
Own the end-to-end experience from laptop-in-box to first pull request: workstation imaging and configuration, privilege and access workflows, enterprise connectivity, developer tooling, and the AI-powered development environment that ties it all together.
Turn "weeks to onboard" into "ready in an hour."
Design and build the systems that make a developer ready to write code for their team within their first hour at enterprise scale.
Make agentic development tools a first-class citizen, ensuring they are part of the standard environment and developers know how to use them well.
Lead by building, writing code, reviewing code, and architecting solutions alongside the team.
Engage deeply with program teams to understand their constraints and bring those lessons back to improve what is being built.
Drive measurable impact in onboarding time, developer satisfaction, AI tool adoption, and time spent delivering mission software.
Continuously evaluate emerging tools and practices in workstation management, developer environments, and agentic development, and incorporate what's worth adopting into the enterprise standard.