Description
Leidos supports a central government customer and contributes to the current and future iterations of critical national infrastructure.
Responsibilities
•Provide technical leadership for the software team, collaborate with architects on solution approaches, guide implementation, and make engineering decisions that balance delivery, quality, and operational risk
•Apply agreed standards and processes consistently across delivery and engineering practices throughout the project lifecycle
•Develop, debug, test, document, and deploy software enhancements aligned with the Software Development Strategy
•Lead delivery of Java-based backend services and APIs that process business events and workflows and integrate with downstream systems and data services in a secure, highly available environment
•Drive strong engineering practices across the team
•Ensure adherence to code review standards and project quality gates
•Promote clean, maintainable, well-documented code
•Guide system design and development by analysing information needs, system flows, data usage, and work processes, and translating them into practical implementation approaches
•Own technical oversight of the build and deployment pipeline, ensuring it is continuously validated and fit for purpose; work with engineers and supporting roles to meet CI/CD, quality gate, and security scanning requirements
•Evaluate requests, requirements, problem definitions, solution options, and their impact on operational systems to determine operational feasibility
•Lead engineers and collaborate with architects and the test team to ensure new and modified software is fully verified before promotion
•Break down designs into workable, reportable tasks for incremental delivery in a Scrum/Agile manner
•Oversee and enable project test automation; ensure engineers deliver unit and integration tests as part of development, and support and coordinate automation activities while the test team retains ownership of overall outcomes
•Support and continuously improve Agile delivery practices, including planning, estimation, backlog refinement, and delivery cadence
•Ensure effective use of development tooling and processes, including CI/CD pipelines and integrated security scanning
•Mentor and support engineers to raise technical capability and consistency across the team
•Communicate effectively with internal stakeholders and influence technical decisions with clear, concise, well-reasoned input
Requirements
•Extensive software engineering experience, including substantial hands-on delivery with Java 8 and modern Java versions such as 17 and 21, and API design and implementation
•Proven experience as a technical leader, including leading technical decision-making, guiding and mentoring engineers, and representing the software team in customer and stakeholder engagements
•Strong understanding of design patterns and a structured approach to software development
•Strong understanding of Git/Bitbucket branching strategies on large projects with moderately sized teams
•Familiarity with relational databases (PostgreSQL), SQL, and JDBC
•Experience writing unit and integration tests as a normal part of delivery
•Familiarity with Agile software development and iterative delivery models
•Familiarity with the Atlassian tool suite (e.g. Jira, Bitbucket, Bamboo) or equivalent tooling, and a solid understanding of CI/CD concepts, workflows, and practices
•Experience ensuring compliance with code review standards, quality gates, CI/CD pipelines, and security scanning processes
•Able to clearly communicate status, risks, trade-offs, and technical recommendations and represent the software team in technical discussions and reviews
•Must hold and maintain UK Security Clearance and additional programme clearances
Nice to have
•Integration and architectural patterns (e.g. adapters, saga orchestration)
•SOAP, REST web services
•IBM Web Application Server or JBoss
•Unix/Linux or other variants
•Perl/Python/bash scripting
•C/C++
•Performance debugging
•Contributing to or supporting UI and/or API test automation initiatives
Conditions
•33 days annual leave, including public and privilege holidays
•Contributory Pension Scheme
•Private Medical Insurance
•Flexible benefits, including life assurance, health schemes, gym memberships, annual buy and sell holidays, and a cycle to work scheme
•Flexi-Time Working
