Senior Data Engineer

Leidos is seeking a mission-driven Senior Data Engineer to advance the NDOC DOMEX Technology Platform. In this onsite role in Bethesda, MD, you will strengthen data intelligence pipelines that support OSINT operations and document media exploitation. You will work in an agile environment, designing and optimizing search and graph-based platforms, building scalable ingestion and ETL pipelines, and deploying stateful services in Kubernetes.

What you will do

• Design, develop, and optimize scalable data management solutions for advanced analytics and AI/ML workloads.
• Build and maintain Elasticsearch and graph-based data platforms for efficient storage, discovery, and analysis of complex hierarchical data.
• Design and optimize Elasticsearch indices for large-scale hierarchical classification structures, supporting high-performance search, aggregation, and update operations.
• Design, implement, and maintain a graph data store optimized for hierarchical graph structures, large, dense batch updates, and high-throughput analytics.
• Develop scalable ingestion pipelines that support graph analytics at scale.
• Create data schemas, indexing strategies, and partitioning approaches to maximize query performance, scalability, and storage efficiency.
• Collaborate with infrastructure and platform teams to deploy, operate, and optimize Elasticsearch and graph database services in a Kubernetes environment using cloud-native technologies.
• Partner with Data Scientists and AI/ML engineers to ingest, curate, manage, analyze, and securely expunge datasets throughout the data lifecycle.
• Develop automated data loading, transformation, validation, and quality assurance pipelines for production analytics workflows.
• Optimize graph and search infrastructure for high availability, resilience, and performance under large-scale analytical workloads.
• Work with software engineers and system architects to integrate graph and search services into microservice-based applications.
• Participate in SAFe Agile activities, including sprint planning, design reviews, architecture discussions, and technical demonstrations.
• Ensure sound engineering practices, compliance with policies, and delivery of high-quality software.
• Coordinate with test teams to develop and monitor automated system integration tests.
• Engage with cross-functional teams to identify and develop high-value integrations with other systems and applications.
• Provide input to system design for software components, including hardware/software trade-offs, software reuse, and requirements analysis and synthesis from system level to individual software components (including COTS/GOTS where applicable).

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, or a related field and 12–15 years of relevant experience, or a Master’s with 10–13 years of experience.
• Active Top Secret/SCI clearance and ability to obtain and maintain a Polygraph.
• Elasticsearch/OpenSearch architecture, index design, mappings, analyzers, and query optimization.
• Graph databases such as JanusGraph, Neo4j, TigerGraph, Amazon Neptune, or Memgraph.
• Data modeling for hierarchical and highly connected datasets.
• Large-scale ETL/ELT pipeline development.
• Kubernetes deployment and operations for stateful data services.
• Distributed storage systems and high-volume data ingestion.
• Python or Java for data engineering and automation.

Technologies you may work with

• Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, JanusGraph, Neo4j, TigerGraph, Amazon Neptune, Memgraph, Kubernetes
• Cloud-native technologies
• Python, Java
• Elasticsearch indices, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch mappings, analyzers, query optimization
• Graph data store, microservice-based applications, SAFe Agile

Nice to have

• Experience supporting AI/ML and data science workflows.
• Apache Kafka or similar streaming technologies.
• Experience with Linux, containerization, CI/CD pipelines, and Infrastructure-as-Code.
• Graph analytics frameworks and algorithms such as graph traversal, centrality, community detection, similarity analysis, and link prediction.
• Experience with Keycloak and security best practices (authN/Z, secrets management).
• Experience building and maintaining microservices in Kubernetes.
• Familiarity with Infrastructure-as-Code tools such as CloudFormation, Terraform, or Pulumi.

Benefits

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

Pay range: USD 131,300 - 237,350 per year

Location: Bethesda, MD (onsite)

Posting date: July 27, 2026

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Commitment to non-discrimination: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, race, ethnicity, age, national origin, citizenship, religion, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, pregnancy, family structure, marital status, ancestry, domestic partner status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran or military status, or any other basis prohibited by law. Leidos will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories consistent with relevant laws.