The Chief Engineer serves as the program’s primary technical authority and is accountable for integrated technical success across Agile product development, IT operations, and systems/network engineering. This role leads the Engineering Review Board, ensures cross-functional alignment, and mitigates technical risks across the full lifecycle—from initial requirements through steady-state operations.

Core Responsibilities

1) Technical Authority, Strategy & Governance

• Technical delivery accountability: Deliver an integrated technical solution that satisfies requirements per approved plans and the contract; ensure all technical contractual requirements are met. 

• Architectural integrity: Define and maintain the program “North Star” architecture; ensure Agile development teams don’t create silos that conflict with network or security constraints.

• Disciplined engineering processes: Implement disciplined engineering processes and engineering standards (CI/CD, coding practices, network protocols). 

• Technical baselines & approvals: Establish and maintain formal technical baselines; approve technical plans, work products, and deliverables. 

• Systems engineering alignment: Execute in accordance with the Systems Engineering Plan (or equivalent) and ensure engineering lifecycle selection is appropriate for the program. 

2) Requirements, Design, Integration & Verification

• Requirements leadership: Understand technical requirements; direct engineering execution to ensure the solution meets user needs and contract requirements; review functional analyses, requirements analyses, and requirements flow-down. 

• Design & trade decisions: Review alternative design solutions and trade studies; lead technical design and development. 

• End-to-end integration: Manage/oversee development, integration, test, and deployment support as required (including coordination across product, infrastructure, and operations). 

• Verification support: Ensure requirements are satisfied by an integrated and testable solution; support verification of requirements and interfaces via analysis, simulation, and/or test. 

• Reviews: Lead and participate in formal and informal technical reviews. 

3) Cross-Domain Operations & Service Delivery Integration

• DevOps/SRE leadership: Bridge Development (Agile squads) and Operations (System/Network administrators) to ensure seamless deployments and high availability.

• Interoperability & performance: Ensure system and network engineering designs support low-latency requirements of modern product applications.

• Subcontractor technical oversight (as applicable): Monitor subcontractor technical efforts for compliance and performance. 

4) Leadership, Performance & Risk Management

• Risk management: Contribute to and lead technical risk identification and mitigation across the program lifecycle. 

• Incident leadership: Lead Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for high-severity incidents across the stack.

• Technical debt management: Balance rapid feature delivery with long-term health of the network and system infrastructure.

• Program performance visibility: Track and review technical, schedule, and cost performance measures; report status to leadership as appropriate; participate in internal program reviews. 

• Mentorship/escalation: Serve as the final escalation point for Lead Engineers and Architects across workstreams.

Required Qualifications

• Experience: 12 years in technical leadership roles, including 5 years overseeing multi-disciplinary engineering teams.

• Agile expertise: Deep understanding of scaling Agile frameworks (e.g., SAFe, LeSS) and how they interface with infrastructure milestones.

• Network & systems: Proven experience in hybrid-cloud environments and high-availability system design.

• Operations knowledge: Familiarity with ITIL or SRE principles (automated monitoring, alerting, incident response).

• Security: Experience integrating Security-by-Design into the SDLC and network architecture.

Security Clearance Requirements

• Must have: Active Top Secret (TS) clearance with SCI eligibility at time of start.

• Must obtain after start: Counterintelligence (CI) polygraph.

• Ongoing requirement: Must be able to maintain eligibility for Special Access Program (SAP) access.

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:

Pay Range:

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.