Principal Engineer – Contested Autonomy and Navigation

Serve as a Principal Engineer for the Contested Autonomy and Navigation team 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 real-world adversary threats. We support a variety of military autonomous vehicles including drones, unmanned underwater vehicles, and ground robots. Projects involve small teams of engineers working together 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.

We are looking for an individual who enjoys leading teams and growing new work while also “keeping hands dirty” writing software and touching hardware. 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, optimal estimation, AI/ML, path planning, control algorithms) 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 hardware / software integration and local field testing activities
• Support travel for business development activities and customer-facing field demonstrations (not expected to be more than 10% of your time)

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
• Subject matter expertise in algorithm development for autonomy, robotics, unmanned systems, and GPS-denied navigation
• 10+ years of experience in C/C++, Python, and/or MATLAB
• Experience leading research and development teams to successful outcomes in prototype projects for customers such as DARPA, SOCOM, Army DEVCOM, and AFRL
• Successful history of business development activities including leadership roles in competitive white paper and proposal development that led to contract awards
• Must be a US Citizen and have the ability to obtain and maintain a Secret security clearance

Preferred Qualifications

• Doctorate in technical field listed above with 10+ years of experience
• Active Top Secret clearance or above
• Deep customer familiarity with one or two government defense research organizations
• History of involvement with technical conferences and journals (frequent publications, serving as session chair, invited panel member, or journal editor, etc.)

NKE

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:

May 28, 2026

Pay Range:

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.