Autonomous Navigation Principal Engineer
Leidos
Serve as an Autonomous 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 operations
- Perform as a senior technical independent contributor for algorithm development (computer vision, sensor fusion, AI/ML) and software deployment to real-time edge systems
- Recommend and develop new technical solutions and products in support of customer challenges under customer and internally funded research projects
- Support business development activities including white papers, proposals, teaming discussions, technical conferences, and targeted marketing discussions with new customers (but no cold calls)
- Support travel for business development activities and customer-facing field demonstrations (not expected to be more than 10% of your time, typically less)
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
- Algorithm development for GPS-denied navigation and autonomous systems with more than 5 years of experience
- Expertise in C/C++ as well as Python and/or MATLAB with more than 8 years of experience
- Experience leading multiple research and development projects to successful outcomes for customers such as DARPA, SOCOM, Army DEVCOM, and AFRL
- Successful history of business development activities including contributing to white papers and proposals that led to contract award
- US Citizen and ability to be cleared to Secret level
Preferred Qualifications
- Active Top Secret clearance or above
- Deep customer familiarity with one or two government defense research organizations
- Multiple technical publications in refereed journals or conference papers
LInC
At Leidos, we don’t want someone who "fits the mold"—we want someone who melts it down and builds something better. This is a role for the restless, the over-caffeinated, the ones who ask, “what’s next?” before the dust settles on “what’s now.”
If you’re already scheming step 20 while everyone else is still debating step 2… good. You’ll fit right in.
Original Posting:
October 22, 2025For 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:
Pay Range $126,100.00 - $227,950.00The 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.