Lead Test & Validation Engineer - Federal Health IT

Leidos; Reston (VA); On-site; USD 92,000 - 167,000; Full time

Job summary

Leidos Health & Civil Sector is seeking a Test & Validation Engineer Lead to shape the program's quality engineering strategy for NIH/NCI systems. You will guide a multidisciplinary testing team, align with Government stakeholders, and integrate quality across the SDLC, supporting Agile delivery, DevSecOps, and CI/CD.

Based in Reston, VA, the role requires 8+ years of federal IT QA experience, strong communication, and the ability to obtain Federal suitability and Public Trust clearance.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS, IS, or related field; master's preferred.
• 8+ years of progressive experience in QA/IV&V for federal IT programs.
• Experience supporting NIH/HHS or federal civilian agencies.
• Experience implementing automated testing in Agile/DevSecOps environments.
• Ability to obtain Federal suitability or Public Trust clearance.

Responsibilities

• Lead verification, validation, and quality engineering activities across enterprise applications, cloud platforms, AI/ML solutions, and biomedical informatics systems.
• Develop and maintain the TEMP, Validation Strategy, Quality Management Plan, and automated testing framework.
• Define test strategies, acceptance criteria, and validation methodologies for functional, integration, system, regression, performance, security, usability, interoperability, and UAT.
• Collaborate with Government stakeholders, business analysts, software engineers, AI/ML engineers, and SMEs to ensure requirements are fully testable and traceable.
• Oversee automated testing using CI/CD pipelines and DevSecOps practices to improve software quality and release efficiency.
• Lead validation of AI/ML solutions including model verification, performance evaluation, explainability, bias assessment, and drift monitoring.
• Ensure software and AI systems comply with NIH, HHS, NIST, Section 508, privacy, cybersecurity, and federal standards.
• Direct defect management, root cause analysis, corrective actions, and continuous quality improvement initiatives.
• Develop quality metrics, dashboards, and executive reports to communicate testing progress and release readiness to Government leadership.
• Mentor quality engineers and foster continuous improvement and automation.

Skills

Communication skills

Quality engineering

DevSecOps

Test strategy

Compliance awareness

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering

Master's degree preferred

Tools

Azure DevOps

Kubernetes

REST APIs

Git

CI/CD

Job description

Leidos Health & Civil Sector is seeking a Test & Validation Engineer Lead to shape the program's quality engineering strategy for NIH/NCI systems. You will guide a multidisciplinary testing team, align with Government stakeholders, and integrate quality across the SDLC, supporting Agile delivery, DevSecOps, and CI/CD.

Based in Reston, VA, the role requires 8+ years of federal IT QA experience, strong communication, and the ability to obtain Federal suitability and Public Trust clearance.