Engineering Lead, Inner Developer Loop

Leidos is seeking an Engineering Lead to head the inner developer loop, a remote-forward role focused on delivering an enterprise-scale developer experience from the moment a laptop arrives to the moment a first pull request is written. You will guide a hands-on team to unify workstation provisioning, access workflows, enterprise connectivity, and AI-enhanced development tooling, driving onboarding times down and enabling mission-focused software delivery at scale.

Compensation

USD 131,300 - 237,350 per year

Responsibilities

• Direct a team building the inner dev loop and own the end-to-end experience from laptop-in-box to first pull request, including imaging, configuration, privilege workflows, enterprise connectivity, developer tooling, and the AI-powered environment that ties it together.
• Transform onboarding from weeks to hours by designing systems that let a developer write code within their first hour, scalable across the enterprise.
• Make agentic development tools a core part of the standard environment, ensuring developers know how to use AI coding tools effectively through established workflows and practices.
• Lead through hands-on development—write and review code, architect solutions, and demonstrate credibility through delivered outcomes.
• Engage deeply with program teams, maintaining alignment with 3–5 active programs, understanding their constraints, and feeding lessons back into the platform.
• Drive measurable impact across onboarding time, developer satisfaction, AI tool adoption, and the ability of teams to focus on mission software rather than environment issues.
• Stay ahead of the curve by evaluating emerging tools and practices in workstation management, developer environments, and agentic development, and incorporate worthwhile innovations into the enterprise standard.

What you’ll do

• Lead a team focused on the inner dev loop, owning the complete experience from initial provisioning to productive code contributions, including imaging, access controls, enterprise connectivity, and AI-enabled tooling.
• Make onboarding dramatically faster by building systems that enable a new developer to be coding for their team within the first hour, at enterprise scale.
• Embed agentic development tools as a first-class component of the standard environment, and cultivate developer proficiency with these tools through clear workflows and practices.
• Operate as a builder and architect, delivering real software and earning credibility through shipped projects rather than through process alone.
• Maintain close collaboration with program teams to ensure solutions fit real-world engineering workflows and constraints.
• Demonstrate tangible results through onboarding velocity, satisfaction scores, AI tool adoption, and reduced friction in delivering mission software.
• Continuously scan for and adopt valuable advancements in workstation management and developer environments.

Who you are

• A builder who writes production-grade code and leads teams to deliver impactful software.
• A platform thinker who treats developer tooling as a product and earns trust across engineering teams.
• Depth with breadth: deep expertise in at least one core domain plus credible collaboration across the stack.
• AI-ready mindset: integrated agentic development tools into your workflow and guided others to do the same.
• A multiplier who measures success by team outcomes and the engineers who rely on the tools you ship.
• Respected by skeptical stakeholders and capable of persuading with technical credibility and clear communication.

What you’ll face

• Operating in large enterprise environments governed by policy, process, and security requirements.
• Balancing security and compliance with velocity in regulated settings.
• Navigating established engineering workflows that require evidence before change is adopted.
• Creating a standardized environment that still serves a diverse set of teams and programs.
• Demonstrating measurable impact while foundational platform work takes time to mature.

Your technical impact

• Reduce onboarding time from weeks to hours with repeatable, scalable provisioning of workstation tooling and access.
• Develop a self-configuring workstation and environment pipeline that ships the necessary tools and connections out of the box.
• Integrate agentic development tools as part of the standard developer environment from day one.
• Codify patterns and practices that help teams use these tools effectively, including workflows, reviews, and quality guardrails.
• Improve key metrics around lead time and developer experience scores while maintaining security and compliance standards.
• Build trust to accelerate AI-native software development across the organization without compromising governance.

Preferred qualifications

• Evidence of leading enterprise-scale engineering transformations with measurable improvements in DORA or SPACE metrics.
• Experience embedding within delivery teams as a senior technical change agent, driving sustained workflow improvements.
• Hands-on experience operationalizing AI-augmented development practices beyond individual productivity, establishing team-level patterns for code review, testing, and architecture.
• Background delivering mission-critical software in regulated environments (DoD, IC, FedRAMP High, IL5/6) where security, compliance, and velocity must coexist.
• 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 engineering standards.
• Recognized technical credibility through principal or senior roles, open-source work, conference talks, or internal leadership.

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

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree and 12+ years in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field (Master's preferred). Additional years of experience may be used in lieu of degree.
• 12+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, including building or owning developer tooling, platform engineering, or internal developer experience systems.
• Experience leading small technical teams with ownership of outcomes as a tech lead or engineering lead.
• Deep expertise in at least one domain (systems/platform engineering, DevOps, developer tooling, workstation management, or infrastructure) with working fluency across multiple domains.
• Hands-on experience with enterprise developer environment tooling (endpoint management, identity and access management, package management, CI/CD pipelines, container runtimes).
• Proven experience using AI coding tools in real development workflows (not just demos).
• Strong understanding of software quality practices, including testing, code review, and CI/CD.
• Excellent communication skills for cross-team collaboration with engineering, security, and IT operations.
• Familiarity with secure software development practices in regulated environments; bonus: FedRAMP, DoD IL4/5, RMF.
• U.S. citizenship required with ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance.