[Hiring] Chief Engineer @Leidos

Role Description

Serve as the Chief Engineer and senior engineering authority for ESCS, maintaining continuity of technical direction and converting programme intent into a production-capable delivery path. The role is accountable for the integrity of the overall engineering solution and leads technical governance across applications, integration, data, cloud, security, test and operational readiness.

Primary Responsibilities

• Own the ESCS engineering strategy, technical baseline, engineering management plan and technical decision record.
• Lead multidisciplinary engineering across architecture, software, integration, data, cloud infrastructure, security, test and service readiness.
• Translate customer outcomes and operational scenarios into technical priorities, increments and engineering acceptance criteria.
• Chair technical and design reviews and assure high-level and low-level designs, interfaces and non-functional requirements.
• Maintain technical authority over solution integrity, configuration, interfaces, technical debt and engineering risks.
• Identify the skills, supplier inputs, dependencies, assumptions and assurance evidence required for delivery.
• Align technical estimates, WBS/PBS content, resource assumptions and technical milestones with the integrated programme plan.
• Drive repeatable deployment, automated testing, configuration management, observability, security and documentation practices.
• Provide technical coaching and delegated authority while retaining accountability for the overall engineering solution.
• Support customer demonstrations, bids and investment decisions with clear evidence of feasibility, maturity and residual risk.

Qualifications

• Chief engineering or senior technical authority leadership
• Systems engineering and lifecycle assurance
• Enterprise and solution architecture
• COTS and SaaS integration
• API, event and data-flow architecture
• Cloud-native engineering, Infrastructure as Code and DevSecOps
• Non-functional requirements, security and operational readiness
• Technical baseline, configuration and interface management
• Technical planning, estimation, risk and design governance
• Senior stakeholder, supplier and multidisciplinary engineering leadership

Requirements

• Technical authority or engineering leadership for complex systems integration or enterprise platform delivery.
• Leading engineering across multiple disciplines rather than a single technology domain.
• Maintaining the integrity of an end-to-end solution through design, build, integration, verification and transition.
• Converting discovery, prototype or demonstration outputs into an assured production delivery path.
• Influencing senior stakeholders while remaining sufficiently close to delivery to resolve technical constraints.
• Producing and assuring technical documentation, estimates, design evidence and acceptance artefacts.

Desired Experience

• Supply chain, procurement, order management or logistics technology.
• IBM Sterling OMS, Ivalua, planning platforms or comparable COTS products.
• AWS-based platforms, containerised workloads and automated deployment.
• IRAD, bid, demonstrator or product incubation environments.
• Defence, government or security-conscious delivery.

Success in the Role

• The ESCS technical baseline is coherent, controlled and traceable to programme outcomes.
• Technical decisions are timely, explicit and supported by evidence.
• Capability teams and suppliers work within consistent engineering guardrails.
• The route from demonstration to production is understood, costed and assured.
• Technical debt, dependencies and assurance gaps are visible and actively managed.
• Programme leaders receive clear, credible and independent engineering advice.

Clearance Requirements

• SC required to start
• SC required for the role

Benefits

• Contributory Pension Scheme
• Private Medical Insurance
• 33 days Annual Leave (including public and privilege holidays)
• Access to Flexible benefits (including life assurance, health schemes, gym memberships, annual buy and sell holidays and a cycle to work scheme)
• Flexible Working Scheme