AI-First Engineering Program Manager — Lead 110-Person ART

Leidos Inc; Gaithersburg (MD); Hybrid; USD 131,000 - 237,000; Full time

Job summary

Leidos is seeking an Engineering Program Manager to join the Air Traffic Business Area within the Homeland Sector, supporting the Leidos Common Automation Platform (L-CAP). This role leads second-line engineering management for an Agile Release Train of about 110 people, with responsibility for workforce planning, talent strategy, and budget across the ART.

Hybrid work arrangement requires 3 days onsite and 2 days remote, with work locations in Gaithersburg, MD; Egg Harbor Township, NJ; or

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 8+ years of engineering management experience including 3+ years as a second-line manager (managing managers)
• Experience scaling engineering organizations of 75+ personnel in a matrixed environment
• Workforce planning expertise including headcount forecasting, skill gap analysis, and organizational design
• Engineering talent acquisition governance including requisition strategy, interview processes, and hiring decisions
• Performance management at scale including calibration, promotion governance, and compensation planning
• Experience managing engineering managers and developing management capability within technical organizations
• Resource allocation and capacity management across multiple concurrent engineering teams
• Budget management including labor cost forecasting, variance analysis, and headcount planning
• Effective stakeholder management across program leadership, HR business partners, and talent acquisition
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust; U.S. citizenship required; subject to government background investigation
• Experience managing workforce transitions in software-intensive modernization programs including skill migration and team restructuring
• Understanding of engineering competency frameworks and career ladder design for software and systems engineering disciplines

Responsibilities

• Serve as second-line engineering manager for an ART of ~110 personnel, directly managing 4-6 People Managers who lead engineering teams
• Own workforce planning and organizational design for the ART including team structure, headcount allocation, and skill mix optimization
• Drive engineering staffing decisions including hiring priorities, requisition development, and candidate selection governance
• Manage engineering talent pipeline ensuring the ART maintains adequate bench strength, succession depth, and critical-skill coverage
• Oversee career development strategy for engineering managers, ensuring People Managers are equipped to grow and retainer their teams
• Govern performance management across the ART - calibrate ratings, align recognition, and ensure equitable evaluation standards
• Make cross-team resource allocation and rotation decisions to balance workload, develop talent, and address skill gaps
• Partner with the RTE and ART Product Manager on capacity planning, ensuring staffing aligns with delivery priorities
• Own engineering headcount budget and labor forecasting for the ART, coordinating with program finance on variance and projections
• Drive retention strategy including compensation alignment, engagement initiatives, and attrition risk mitigation
• Manage organizational change including team restructuring, role transitions, and onboarding/offboarding of engineering personnel
• Align engineering workforce composition with modernization priorities ensuring critical skill sets are developed and retained as legacy expertise transitions to cloud-native competencies
• Develop workforce transition plans supporting engineering personnel reskilling from legacy ATC systems to modern distributed service architectures
• Coordinate engineering resource strategy across ART boundaries ensuring program-wide workforce balance and avoiding single-point-of-failure dependencies
• 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.

Skills

Engineering management

Second-line manager

Workforce planning

Headcount forecasting

Talent acquisition governance

Performance management

Resource allocation

Budget management

Stakeholder management

Public Trust

SAFe/Agile leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Engineering

Job description

Leidos is seeking an Engineering Program Manager to join the Air Traffic Business Area within the Homeland Sector, supporting the Leidos Common Automation Platform (L-CAP). This role leads second-line engineering management for an Agile Release Train of about 110 people, with responsibility for workforce planning, talent strategy, and budget across the ART.

Hybrid work arrangement requires 3 days onsite and 2 days remote, with work locations in Gaithersburg, MD; Egg Harbor Township, NJ; or