Description
Leidos is seeking Senior Systems Engineers to join the Air Traffic Business Area within the Homeland Sector, supporting the development of next-generation flight service and air traffic systems. This work aligns with the FAA's broader initiative to modernize legacy flight service capabilities, replacing aging infrastructure with scalable, cloud-based platforms designed to improve safety and operational efficiency,particularly in remote and high-dependency aviation environments.
As a member of a Scaled Agile software development organization, you will contribute to the technical execution of a program that integrates proven, globally deployed technologies with modern cloud-native capabilities. You will work alongside cross-functional teams and technical leaders to deliver predictable outcomes in a highly regulated, safety-critical environment.
In this position, you will serve as the dedicated Systems Engineer for an Agile/SAFe development team, partnering closely with Product Owners, architects, software engineers, testers, DevSecOps engineers, and customer stakeholders to define, refine, and validate system capabilities.
Primary Responsibilities
- Review FAA requirement documents, advisory circulars, and applicable regulations to extract intent, constraints, interfaces, and acceptance criteria.
- Translate operational and regulatory requirements into detailed, testable system requirements, features, and acceptance criteria that support Agile development activities.
- Collaborate with Product Owners and development teams to refine backlog items, clarify system behaviors, and ensure technical completeness and traceability.
- Engage with customer stakeholders, operators, and subject matter experts to identify use cases with an emphasis on completeness, testability, alignment with operational workflows, and readiness for validation trials.
- Decompose high-level regulatory and operational requirements into specific capability statements with measurable performance criteria and traceability to FAA compliance outcomes.
- Develop and maintain requirements traceability between stakeholder needs, system requirements, architecture artifacts, implementation tasks, and verification activities.
- Support system design discussions by evaluating technical approaches, documenting trade-offs, identifying integration impacts, and assessing operational or regulatory risks.
- Prepare and review technical documentation, including system specifications, interface definitions, use cases, operational workflows, verification plans, and requirements traceability matrices.
- Participate in Agile ceremonies, technical interchange meetings, structured reviews, and system inspections.
- Coordinate with software engineering, test, cybersecurity, and DevSecOps teams to ensure system requirements are fully implemented, validated, and operationally supportable.
- Assist in defining verification and validation strategies, including support for demonstrations, integration testing, operational assessments, and customer reviews.
- Systematically capture and communicate design decisions, performance trade-offs, compliance rationales, and risk assessments to support program transparency and technical governance.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, systems engineering, or a related field and at least 8 years of relevant experience, or a Master's degree with at least 6 years of experience
- Experience working within Agile development environments, including familiarity with Agile methodologies, principles, and tools
- Experience performing systems engineering activities across the system development lifecycle, including requirements analysis, decomposition, traceability, integration, and verification
- Strong understanding of disciplined engineering processes and attention to detail in highly regulated or mission-critical environments
- Experience collaborating with cross-functional technical teams, customers, and stakeholders to define and refine system capabilities
- Experience preparing and maintaining technical documentation and requirements artifacts
- Familiarity with software development concepts, architectures, interfaces, and integration considerations
- Clear and effective verbal and written communication skills
- Experience with cloud-based systems and modern software architectures
- Ability to obtain SF-85 Public Trust suitability determination
- US Citizenship
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with Java, Python, React, and scripting languages
- Knowledge of AI-assisted development workflows and tools
- Knowledge of DevSecOps practices and CI/CD pipelines
- Knowledge of air traffic control systems, general aviation, and/or flight services
- Practical knowledge of FAA/DoD systems, technical policies, standards, and orders
- Experience leveraging requirements-management and model-based engineering tools
- Experience supporting verification and validation activities in regulated environments
- Familiarity with systems integration, interface management, and operational testing in large-scale distributed systems