Engineering Lead, Inner Developer Loop

Leidos is seeking an Engineering Lead to shape the inner developer loop from remote locations, guiding a team to deliver an enterprise-grade developer experience. This role blends hands-on software development with platform engineering leadership, focused on speeding onboarding and enabling developers to contribute from day one. The position is remote and offers a competitive salary range of USD 131,300 to 237,350 per year.

Responsibilities

• Direct a team building the inner dev loop, owning end-to-end experience from initial device provisioning to the first pull request. This includes workstation imaging and configuration, privilege and access workflows, enterprise connectivity, developer tooling, and the AI-powered development environment that unifies everything.
• Convert onboarding timelines from weeks to hours by designing scalable systems that let a new developer begin coding within their first hour, at enterprise scale.
• Make agentic development tools a core part of the standard environment, integrating AI coding tools into the base setup and teaching teams how to use them effectively through workflows, code reviews, and established practices.
• Lead by building: contribute code, review code, and architect solutions alongside your team, earning credibility through shipped deliverables rather than program management alone.
• Engage closely with program teams to ensure solutions align with real engineering workflows; maintain connections to 3–5 active programs and translate their constraints back into the development roadmap.
• Drive measurable impact through onboarding reductions, higher developer satisfaction, increased AI tool adoption, and more time spent delivering mission software.
• Stay ahead of developments in workstation management, development environments, and agentic tooling, adopting only what adds enterprise value.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree and 12+ years in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field (Master’s preferred); additional experience may substitute for the degree.
• 12+ years of hands-on software engineering, including building or owning developer tooling, platform engineering, or internal developer experience systems.
• Experience leading small technical teams as a tech lead or engineering lead with demonstrated outcomes.
• Deep expertise in at least one domain such as systems/platform engineering, DevOps, developer tooling, workstation management, or infrastructure, with fluency across multiple domains.
• Hands-on experience with enterprise developer environment tooling, including endpoint management (e.g., Jamf, Intune), identity and access management, package management, CI/CD pipelines, and container runtimes.
• Proven use of AI coding tools (such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Sourcegraph Cody) within real development workflows, not just demos.
• Strong software quality practices, including testing strategies, code review, CI/CD, and maintaining quality while moving fast.
• Excellent communication skills to collaborate across engineering teams, security, and IT operations, translating between groups as needed.
• Familiarity with secure software development practices in regulated or compliance-heavy environments; bonus for experience with FedRAMP, DoD IL4/5, RMF.
• U.S. citizenship required and the ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance.

Technologies

• Jamf, Intune, CI/CD pipelines, container runtimes, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Sourcegraph Cody

Benefits

• Health and Wellness programs
• Income Protection
• Paid Leave
• Retirement
• Competitive compensation

What you'll do

• Lead a team building the inner dev loop, owning the end-to-end experience from laptop provisioning to the first pull request, including imaging, access workflows, enterprise connectivity, tooling, and the AI-enabled environment.
• Transform onboarding to a one-hour process by designing scalable systems that enable new hires to start coding quickly across the enterprise.
• Make agentic development tools a core part of the standard environment and ensure teams know how to use them effectively, establishing productive workflows and practices.
• Write code, review it, and architect solutions alongside the team, proving credibility through delivered work.
• Engage with 3–5 active programs to align work with real engineering needs and translate lessons back into the build.
• Drive measurable impact through faster onboarding, higher developer satisfaction, greater AI tool adoption, and more time delivering mission software.
• Continuously evaluate emerging tools and practices in workstation management and agentic development, integrating valuable options into the enterprise standard.

Who you are

• A builder first who has shipped production systems and loves writing code, delivering real software quality, and leading teams that do the same.
• A platform thinker who treats developer tooling as a product that earns trust from engineers.
• T-shaped with deep expertise in at least one core domain and breadth to engage credibly across the stack.
• All-in on AI, having integrated agentic development tools into your workflow and helped others do the same.
• A multiplier who measures success by team output and improved experiences for engineers, not by individual heroics.
• Respected by skeptics, possessing the technical credibility and communication skills to influence diverse stakeholders and engineers alike.

What you'll face

• Enterprise environments governed by policy, process, and inertia that must be navigated thoughtfully.
• Security and compliance requirements that drive design decisions and execution.
• Engineers with established workflows who require evidence before adopting changes.
• The challenge of standardizing an environment that fits a wide range of teams and programs.
• The need to balance speed with security, quality, and compliance while delivering measurable results.

Your technical impact

• Reduce onboarding time from weeks to hours with a repeatable, scalable provisioning system.
• Deliver a self-configuring workstation environment with the right tools, access, and enterprise connections out of the box.
• Establish agentic development tools as part of the standard developer environment, ready on day one.
• Define patterns that help teams use those tools effectively, including workflows, reviews, and quality guardrails.
• Improve key metrics such as lead time and developer-reported experience scores in the inner loop.
• Build trust that enables accelerated AI-native software development while maintaining security, quality, and compliance.

Preferred qualifications

• Proven leadership in enterprise-scale engineering transformation with measurable DORA or SPACE improvements.
• Experience embedding within delivery teams as a senior technical change agent, driving sustained workflow transformation.
• Hands-on experience operationalizing AI-augmented software development practices at team scale.
• Experience delivering mission-critical software in regulated environments with strong security and compliance requirements.
• 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 standards.
• Recognized technical credibility through principal/staff-level work, open-source contributions, conference talks, or internal leadership.