This role is part of a growing program, and hiring will depend on available funding. We review applications on a rolling basis, but the timeline for interviews and offers may vary. In some cases, we may extend contingent offers that become active once funding is confirmed.
This position is located in Gaithersburg, MD; Egg Harbor Township, NJ; or Eagan, MN This is an opportunity to contribute to projects that impact millions of air travelers.
This is a hybrid position requiring 3 days onsite and 2 days remote work. Candidates should reside a commutable distance to one of the above locations.
Leidos is seeking a Principal Cloud & Platform Architect to join the Air Traffic Business Area within the Homeland Sector, supporting the development of the Leidos Common Automation Platform (L-CAP). L-CAP is a mission-critical, future-ready automation platform built on a hybrid cloud data mesh architecture, enabling next-generation air traffic management capabilities. You will serve as the enterprise platform architect responsible for designing the hybrid cloud infrastructure and platform services that underpin the L-CAP automation platform. We are building with an AI-first engineering mindset, embracing emerging AI capabilities and modern development practices to accelerate delivery, improve software quality, and continuously evolve how we design and build mission-critical systems. This position supports government programs and requires the ability to obtain and maintain a favorable Public Trust investigation.
What You'll Do
Design the hybrid cloud architecture spanning on-premises and cloud environments
Define Kubernetes orchestration strategy for containerized workloads at scale
Establish Infrastructure-as-Code ( IaC) governance using Terraform
Architect FedRAMP-compliant platform designs across multiple environments
Design and govern CI/CD platform services for engineering teams
Lead capacity planning and infrastructure cost modeling
Define platform reliability standards including SLOs and SLIs
Design multi-environment deployment strategy (dev, test, staging, production)
Oversee container orchestration patterns and service mesh architecture
Drive cloud cost optimization and FinOps practices
Design platform architecture to host safety-critical ATC applications with deterministic performance characteristics rather than general enterprise IT workloads
Ensure operational resilience and failover capabilities for distributed real-time ATC services across hybrid cloud deployments
Define platform requirements for deterministic distributed services including latency guarantees and predictable resource allocation
Champion an AI-first engineering culture by identifying and applying AI-assisted development capabilities, automation, and emerging software engineering practices that improve developer productivity, code quality, testing, and delivery.
Core Technical Qualifications:
Bachelor's degree with 12+ years of cloud and platform engineering experience
Expert-level cloud architecture experience with AWS or Azure GovCloud
Production Kubernetes experience at scale (100+ nodes)
Deep Terraform/ IaC expertise for enterprise infrastructure management
Platform engineering leadership for large development organizations
FedRAMP platform compliance and boundary design experience
Container orchestration and microservices platform design
Distributed systems architecture and reliability engineering
Microservices platform design supporting hundreds of services
Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance; US citizenship required; subject to government background investigation
Experience supporting deterministic distributed services with strict latency and availability requirements
Knowledge of platform engineering for safety-critical applications versus general enterprise workloads
Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust
U.S. citizenship required
Successful completion of background investigations as required by the government customer
Preferred / Desired Qualifications
AWS Solutions Architect Professional or Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification
GovCloud deployment and operations experience
Air-gapped and disconnected environment architecture
Platform-as-a-Service design for internal developer teams
SRE and reliability engineering practices
Helm, ArgoCD, and GitOps deployment patterns
Service mesh implementation (Istio, Linkerd)
Experience with hybrid cloud deployment of real-time operational systems in aviation or similar safety-critical domains
Why Leidos?
You’ll work on systems where performance, precision, and reliability matter — every second. This is not experimental AI for prototypes. This is disciplined, responsible AI applied to mission-critical software that supports national infrastructure.
If you’re excited by solving complex problems in regulated, real-world environments — and using AI as a force multiplier rather than a shortcut — we’d like to talk.
ATMC
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.
August 18, 2026
For U.S. Positions: 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 $131,300.00 - $237,350.00
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.
Leidos is a Fortune 500® innovation company rapidly addressing the world’s most vexing challenges in national security and health. The company's global workforce of 48,000 collaborates to create smarter technology solutions for customers in heavily regulated industries. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Leidos reported annual revenues of approximately $15.4 billion for the fiscal year ended December 29, 2023.
Leidos was cited for the meaningful work employees perform that is challenging, impactful, and aligned with our customers’ missions as reasons professionals want to work and stay at our company. Leidos has also been named to lists including Forbes’ Best Employers for Diversity, Forbes’ America’s Best Employers for Women, Military Times Best for Vets Employers, and Ethisphere Institute’s World's Most Ethical Companies®.
Employees enjoy career enrichment opportunities available through mobility and development and experience rewarding relationships with supportive supervisors and talented colleagues and customers. Employees appreciate our flexible work environment, allowing for and encouraging a true work-life balance. Our professionals are also excited about our Employee Resource Groups, like the Collaborative Outreach with Remote and Embedded Employees (CORE), which strives to create an environment where every employee, regardless of location, feels fully engaged as a valued employee of Leidos.
Your most important work is ahead, visit careers.leidos.com for our latest opportunities.
