Software Engineer -Smart Mobility (Transportation)

Join us in improving and shaping the future of the smart mobility with a group of intelligent, motivated, and dedicated individuals! Leidos operates the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Saxton Transportation Operations Laboratory (STOL), a US Department of Transportation (USDOT) onsite R&D lab located at the Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center. STOL’s focus is on improving transportation system operations to achieve USDOT’s safety, mobility, sustainability and equity goals. STOL spearheads a variety of exciting R&D projects involving emerging technologies, including but not limited to infrastructure and vehicle connectivity and automation, everything-in-the loop simulation, and AI/ML modeling.  To promote these efforts, Leidos is looking for a Mid-level Software Engineer to join our team!

Location: This role will be expected to work full-time at the customer site in McLean, VA

Learn about STOL here: https://highways.dot.gov/turner-fairbank-highway-research-center/labs/STOL

Candidates MUST:

All applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States with proof of legal status and be eligible for a Public Trust Clearance, which includes three consecutive years in the United States within the last five years.  

Primary Responsibilities

• Lead development for research prototypes and proof-of-concepts for various intelligent transportation systems (ITS) applications across a variety of ITS devices, including vehicles, infrastructure, and cloud systems.

• Participate in and help shape our open-source software process, triaging and addressing issues reported by external users and evaluating 3rd party code contributions.

• Identify, document, and formulate approaches to addressing areas of technical debt.

• Conduct hands-on test events and demonstrations, on-site at TFHRC and off-site at test facilities.

• Analyze and assess the team’s existing ITS software systems to understand their architecture, and how they can be redesigned into more modular, scalable, and maintainable components.

• Contribute to internal best practices for software development and lead knowledge sharing to support adoption across development teams.

• Work with cross-functional internal team to determine technical feasibility of projects, breakdown project goals into software development tasks, and assist with overall effort and timeline estimation of planned work.

• Lead the execution of planned technical work, including design work, addressing unplanned technical challenges, and being responsive to changes in customer needs.

• Directly interact with on-site customer representatives and external stakeholders to communicate across technical disciplines as needed throughout a project’s life cycle.

Minimal Qualifications

• Interest in working with emerging technologies and shaping the future of transportation.

• A Bachelor’s degree in computer science or engineering with at least 4 years of professional experience in C++ software development, or a Master’s degree with at least 2 years of professional experience in C++ software development.

• Experience using CMake for building C++ packages.

• Experience with Git.

• Experience with Docker (including docker-compose).

• Experience developing in an Agile framework using toolsets such as JIRA and Confluence.

• Proficiency in software quality techniques and practices (automated unit testing, test-driven design/development, CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions, static code analysis tools, etc.).

• Understanding of mathematical fundamentals, including geometry, linear algebra, probability, graph theory, set theory, and statistics.

Preferred Qualifications

• Extensive experience designing, implementing, and maintaining C++ software packages in a Linux environment.

• Experience with Linux build systems and package management systems.

• Software development experience with Java and/or Python.

• Experience with Kafka or similar message broker systems.

• Experience with Robot Operating System (ROS).

• Experience with user interface (UI) and/or front-end development.

• Familiarity with distributed computing and cloud computing concepts.

• Familiarity with one or more robotics concepts such as localization, path planning, perception, or sensor fusion.<