Join us in improving and shaping the future of the smart mobility with a group of intelligent, motivated, and dedicated individuals! Leidos operates the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Saxton Transportation Operations Laboratory (STOL), a US Department of Transportation (USDOT) onsite R&D lab located at the Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center. STOL’s focus is on improving transportation system operations to achieve USDOT’s safety, mobility, sustainability and equity goals. STOL spearheads a variety of exciting R&D projects involving emerging technologies, including but not limited to infrastructure and vehicle connectivity and automation, everything-in-the loop simulation, and AI/ML modeling in a fast-paced and collaborative laboratory environment to solve novel transportation research problems. 

Learn about STOL here: https://highways.dot.gov/turner-fairbank-highway-research-center/labs/STOL

To promote these efforts, Leidos is looking for a onsite mid-level Software Engineer to join our team!

CANDIDATE MUST:

be able to work onsite full time in McLean, VA AND have the Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust security clearance (which includes current three years immediate residency in the US).

Primary Responsibilities:

• Analyze and assess the team’s existing ITS software systems to understand their architecture, and how they can be redesigned into more modular, scalable, and maintainable components.
• Contribute to internal best practices for software development and lead knowledge sharing to support adoption across development teams.
• Work with cross-functional internal team to determine technical feasibility of projects, breakdown project goals into software development tasks, and assist with overall effort and timeline estimation of planned work.
• Lead the execution of planned technical work, including design work, addressing unplanned technical challenges, and being responsive to changes in customer needs.
• Directly interact with on-site customer representatives and external stakeholders to communicate across technical disciplines as needed throughout a project’s life cycle.
• Lead development for research prototypes and proof-of-concepts for various intelligent transportation systems (ITS) applications across a variety of ITS devices, including infrastructure, vehicle, and cloud systems.
• Participate in and help shape our open-source software process, triaging and addressing issues reported by external users and evaluating 3rd party code contributions.
• Identify, document, and formulate approaches to addressing areas of technical debt.
• Conduct hands-on test events and demonstrations, on-site at TFHRC and off-site at test facilities.

Minimal Qualifications:

• Interest in working with emerging technologies and shaping the future of transportation.
• A Bachelor’s degree in computer science or engineering with at least 4 years of professional experience in object-oriented software development, or a Master’s degree with at least 2 years of professional experience in object-oriented software development.
• Experience and familiarity with manual memory management in languages like C/C++.
• Experience in developing solutions to open-ended research questions and developing novel approaches to solving problems.
• Strong ability and interest to learn new problem domains, new skills, algorithms, and concepts.
• Interest and motivation to develop software to answer valuable research questions to advance transportation technology.
• Experience with Git.
• Experience with Docker (including docker-compose).
• Experience developing in an Agile framework using toolsets such as JIRA and Confluence.
• Proficiency in software quality techniques and practices (automated unit testing, test-driven design/development, CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions, static code analysis tools, etc.).
• Understanding of mathematical fundamentals, including geometry, linear algebra, probability, graph theory, set theory, and statistics.
   

Preferred Qualifications:

• Extensive experience designing, implementing, and maintaining C++, Java, and Python software packages in a Linux environment.
• Experience with Linux build systems and package management systems.
• Experience with Kafka or similar message broker systems.
• Experience with Robot Operating System (ROS).
• Experience with user interface (UI) and/or front-end development.
• Familiarity with distributed computing and cloud computing concepts.
• Familiarity with one or more robotics concepts such as localization, path planning, perception, or sensor fusion.
• Familiarity with simulation environments such as SUMO or CARLA, or other simulators built in Unreal or Unity.
• Familiarity with existing CDA infrastructure standards and/or hardware such as those from SAE or IEEE.
• Experience in a fast-paced dynamic R&D environment.
• Experience as software engineering team lead.

Anticipated Salary range for this role is $95-$120k

If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo — because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 — and moving faster than anyone else dares.

Original Posting:

February 26, 2026

Pay Range:

Pay Range $87,100.00 - $157,450.00

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.