Serve as a Autonomy and Navigation Principal Engineer for the Leidos Innovation Center (LInC) in Huntsville, AL.  Our team’s mission is to: (1) develop and demonstrate contested autonomy and navigation technologies to meet urgent military operational needs to operate in contested, RF-challenged environments, and (2) rapidly transition this technology to operational platforms to outpace the adversary threats currently being faced in the field.  We support a wide variety of military autonomous vehicles including drones, unmanned underwater vehicles, and ground robots.  Projects involve small teams of engineers working together in spiral or agile development environments to meet aggressive customer schedules aimed at near-term field demonstrations of emerging capabilities.  Typical customers include Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Air Force Research Laboratory, Office of Naval Research (ONR), and Army engineering research centers.

The ideal candidate for this position will be an engineering “triple threat,” excelling as a technical individual contributor, a technical leader, and a business developer.  The position will involve a mix of direct and indirect work focused on development of innovative solutions related to autonomous behavior generation, object detection, multi-vehicle collaboration, and GPS-denied navigation for autonomous vehicles.

Primary Responsibilities

Manage and lead highly-technical projects related to autonomous systems operating in contested environments, with an emphasis on GPS-denied operationsRecommend and develop new technical solutions and products in support of customer challenges under customer and internally funded research projectsSupport business development activities including white papers, proposals, teaming discussions, technical conferences, and targeted marketing discussions with new customers (but no cold calls)Provide systems engineering support for large projects, focused on ensuring good decisions are made at the system level for the project and generation of key artifacts for the project such as requirements development and test planning (not systems engineering for the sake of large document generation)Perform as a technical independent contributor in your particular areas of subject matter expertise when required on projects, particularly when challenging problems are encounteredBrief executive leadership (internally or customer) regarding matters of significant importance to the organization/projectSupport travel for business development activities and customer-facing field demonstrations (not expected to be more than 5 – 10% of your time, typically less)Coordinate across business area lines within Leidos to promote and provide critical Autonomy and Navigation technologies in support of development contracts and proposals.

Basic Qualifications

Bachelor’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering or related technical field (including Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or Aerospace Engineering) with 12+ years of experience or a Master’s Degree in advanced technical field with 10+ years of experience.Subject matter expertise in algorithm development for autonomy, robotics, unmanned systems, and/or GPS-denied navigationProven track record leading research and development teams to successful outcomes in prototype projects for customers such as DARPA, DIU, ONR, Army DEVCOM, and AFRLSuccessful history of business development activities including writing white papers and proposals that led to contract awardExperience supporting key Systems Engineering artifacts for research and development projectsMust be a U.S. Citizen and have the ability to obtain and maintain a Secret security clearance.

Preferred Qualifications

Doctorate Degree in advanced technical field with 8+ years of experienceActive Top Secret clearance or aboveDeep customer familiarity with one or two government defense research organizationsMultiple technical publications in refereed journals as well as conference papersConnections across industry in the domain of autonomy and navigation to foster teaming arrangements for new opportunitiesPMP certification from Project Management InstituteExperience with a technical program that transitioned from R&D to a program of record.Experience with a program requiring technical data packages (TDPs), quality inspections, safety reviews, etc.Experience with (or responsibility for) the production of a commercial or military product involving the integration of hardware and software in a custom housing, whether in-house or through a vendor.

LInC

Original Posting Date:2025-02-18

While subject to change based on business needs, Leidos reasonably anticipates that this job requisition will remain open for at least 3 days with an anticipated close date of no earlier than 3 days after the original posting date as listed above.

Pay Range:Pay Range $126,100.00 - $227,950.00

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.