Chief Engineer, Developer Experience

Leidos is building MissionOS, a unified platform for engineers to build, deploy, and operate mission-critical software. The Chief Engineer for Developer Experience will define the platform architecture and drive technical direction to ensure the platform meets the needs of thousands of developers while maintaining security and compliance.

Responsibilities:

• Define the platform architecture. Work with the MissionOS Product Owner to design the long-term vision for how infrastructure, runtimes, CI/CD, developer tooling, and self-service portals fit together into a cohesive developer platform
• Drive technical direction. Lead build vs. buy evaluations, architectural trade-off decisions, and integration design across multiple platform capabilities (pSDO, LSRE, Quiver, and future tools). You're the deep-dive technical voice that informs product decisions
• Partner with engineering teams. Work closely with engineering managers building individual MissionOS capabilities to ensure implementation aligns with the broader platform vision. Talk shop. Review designs. Solve integration challenges
• Move fast on emerging needs. Program teams need platform capabilities now. You balance long-term architectural consistency with the urgency of delivering value quickly. You know when to build for the future and when to ship something that works today
• Represent platform needs externally. Engage with corporate IT (CIOS), security (CIS), and compliance teams to ensure platform decisions align with enterprise standards, security requirements, and regulatory constraints
• Cover security and compliance. Ensure MissionOS platform decisions account for security, compliance, and operational risk. You speak confidently with security teams about how the platform addresses their concerns
• Enable self-service at scale. Design infrastructure- and policy-as-code patterns, golden path templates, and developer portal experiences that let teams provision environments, deploy applications, and access services without waiting for tickets

Requirements:

• Master's degree and 15+ years in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field (Master's preferred)
• 15+ years of software engineering experience with significant focus on platform engineering, infrastructure, DevOps, or developer tooling
• Deep hands-on experience designing and building developer platforms—internal developer portals, CI/CD systems, infrastructure-as-code, self-service environments, runtime platforms
• Strong architectural thinking with proven ability to design systems that balance immediate needs with long-term scalability and maintainability
• Solid understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) including compute, networking, IAM, and infrastructure services
• Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, ArgoCD, or equivalent)
• Proficiency with infrastructure as code (Terraform, Pulumi, AWS CDK, CloudFormation)
• Familiarity with CI/CD platforms (GitLab, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, CircleCI, or equivalent) and how to design self-service pipelines at scale
• Strong understanding of security and compliance requirements and satisfying them through policy-as-code in enterprise or regulated environments. Ability to engage credibly with security teams about platform risk, SBOM management, vulnerability scanning, and secure-by-design principles
• Excellent communication skills—you can explain complex technical decisions to both engineers and executives
• U.S. citizenship required; ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance
• Prior experience building platforms in defense, aerospace, or federal government contexts with familiarity with FedRAMP, RMF, or DoD IL4/5/6 requirements
• Experience with developer portal platforms like Backstage, Port, or custom-built internal portals
• Hands-on experience with Agile tooling (Jira, Azure DevOps) and integration with developer workflows
• Background in DevSecOps, software supply chain security, or application security
• Experience evaluating, procuring, and integrating third-party developer tools at enterprise scale
• Exposure to AI-enabled development workflows or platform support for AI/ML workloads