Junior Software Engineer with AI-enabled development experience

Job Description

Junior Software Engineer with AI-enabled development experience | Leidos

The Tone:
This is an early career position at Leidos, located in Gaithersburg, MD; Eagan, MN; or Egg Harbor, NJ. Leidos is an industry and technology leader serving government and commercial customers with digital and mission innovations. This role directly contributes to real-time, safety-critical systems fundamental to national air traffic operations in the United Kingdom, supporting the modernization of high-availability air traffic management platforms. You will blend traditional systems engineering practices with responsible AI-augmented software development techniques to solve complex problems in regulated, real-world environments.

The TL;DR
• Role: Junior Software Engineer
• Type: Full-time
• Location: Hybrid, Gaithersburg, MD; Eagan, MN; Egg Harbor, NJ
• Pay: $69550–$125725 yearly
• Team: UK National Airspace System Replacement Product Delivery Team (UK NASR PDT)
• Mission: Modernize a high-availability air traffic management platform by blending traditional systems engineering practices with AI-augmented software development techniques for national air traffic operations.
• Tech Stack: C, C++, Ada, Linux (Red Hat), virtual machines, hypervisors, TCP/IP, UDP, SCTP, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini

What You’ll Actually Do
• Design: Design, develop, test, and maintain software for real-time, high-availability systems.
• Augment: Apply AI-assisted development tools to accelerate coding, refactoring, debugging, and automated test generation.
• Integrate: Utilize AI responsibly across the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), including requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing, documentation, and code review.
• Analyze: Analyze complex system requirements and translate them into efficient, maintainable designs.
• Automate: Develop and maintain automation scripts across development, test, and production environments.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or a Master’s degree; US citizenship required for Public Trust clearance.
• Experience: 2+ years of relevant experience with a Bachelor’s degree, or a Master’s degree; hands-on experience using AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot) for code generation, refactoring, debugging, and automated test creation with IDE-integrated workflows; experience incorporating AI/ML techniques into software engineering workflows; experience with automated testing frameworks.
• Skills: Strong object-oriented programming; proficiency in C, C++, and/or Ada; experience developing real-time, multi-threaded systems; familiarity with Linux (Red Hat), virtual machines, and hypervisors; experience with low-level communications protocols (TCP/IP, UDP, SCTP); experience with hardware or complex system integration; experience with source control and configuration management tools; strong communication skills and ability to work independently and within cross-functional teams.
• Bonus: Ada proficiency preferred; familiarity with large language model platforms (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini); experience designing effective prompts and validating AI-generated output; understanding of human-in-the-loop development and responsible AI usage; ability to evaluate AI-generated outputs for correctness, performance, safety, and bias, especially in regulated or safety-critical environments.