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From the employer's careers site First seen 25 Oct 2026

Lead Systems Engineer

Leidos Gaithersburg, MD senior full-time

Salary

$87,100.00 - $157,450.00 per year

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Description

Leidos is seeking Lead 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.

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.

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 with 4–8 years of relevant experience, or a Master’s degree with 2–6 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

Skills

Required

Nice to have

Ready to apply?

You apply with the employer directly. Their original posting is here: https://leidos.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/External/job/Gaithersburg-MD/Systems-Engineer_R-00185985

Apply on Leidos