Position: Senior Developer / Product Owner
Location: Colorado Springs, CO
At Leidos, we tackle complex challenges that matter. Our teams deliver innovative, mission-driven solutions powered by diverse talent, technical excellence, and a shared commitment to doing what’s right—for our customers, our people, and our world. If you thrive at the intersection of deep technical work and strategic influence, this role offers the chance to shape the future of a major mission-critical system.
Your Next Career Challenge
We’re seeking a Senior Developer / Product Owner with strong hands-on experience in Java and C++ to support a large, long-lived system that blends legacy components with modernized services. This role is ideal for a senior engineer who enjoys diving into complex codebases, understanding systems end-to-end, and using that insight to drive architecture, modernization, and technical direction. You’ll remain deeply engaged in design and development while owning the technical roadmap for key subsystems.
This position reports directly to the Chief Engineer.
Key Responsibilities:
Technical Leadership & Development
Serve as a senior individual contributor working directly in Java and C++ codebases across legacy and modernized components.
Analyze code to understand system behavior, data flow, and performance characteristics.
Provide mentorship on design patterns, refactoring strategies, and implementation best practices.
Conduct code reviews focused on quality, maintainability, performance, and architectural alignment.
Technical Product Ownership
Develop a deep understanding of the system architecture, including services, middleware, databases, and external interfaces.
Understand how components are built, deployed, configured, and operated in production environments.
Own and manage the technical backlog for assigned subsystems.
Translate mission needs and stakeholder requirements into actionable, technically sound implementation plans.
Balance feature development, defect resolution, technical debt reduction, and modernization priorities.
Support refactoring and modularization of legacy Java and C++ applications to improve maintainability and deployment flexibility.
Contribute to containerization and deployment-readiness efforts by identifying required code changes.
Collaborate closely with development, DevOps, and test teams to resolve technical issues.
Act as a bridge between engineering teams and program leadership, ensuring technical realities are clearly communicated and understood.
Basic Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, or related discipline with 8+ years of professional software development experience. Additional experience, training, and/or certifications may be considered in lieu of degree requirement.
US Citizen; currently possessing an active DoD Secret clearance.
Extensive hands-on experience with Java in enterprise or distributed systems.
Strong C++ development experience, especially in performance-sensitive or system-level applications.
Experience working with large, complex, long-lived codebases.
Ability to analyze unfamiliar code and quickly build system-level understanding.
Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.
Preferred Qualifications
Master’s degree in computer science, software engineering, or related discipline with 6+ years of professional software development experience.
Experience as a technical lead, lead engineer, or technical product owner.
Background in refactoring or modernizing legacy Java and C++ systems.
Familiarity with containerization and CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).
Experience with distributed systems, messaging frameworks, or service-oriented architecture.
Prior work supporting defense, aerospace, or other mission-critical environments.
What Success Looks Like
You can clearly articulate how major Java and C++ components interact, where risks exist, and what changes are feasible.
Development teams trust your judgment because you understand the code—not just the roadmap.
Stakeholders rely on you to translate mission needs into realistic, technically grounded plans.
The system becomes more understandable, maintainable, and adaptable under your guidance.
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:February 20, 2026For 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.
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.
Top Skills
What We Do
We Are Leidos For 50 years we have been tackling some of the biggest problems that face our nation and our world. OUR MISSION Through our culture of innovation and history of performance, we develop deep customer trust built on integrity and create enduring solutions that improve our world. Leidos is a science and technology solutions leader working to address some of the world’s toughest challenges in the defense, intelligence, homeland security, civil, and healthcare markets. The company’s 43,000 employees support vital missions for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Reston, Va., Leidos reported annual revenues of approximately $11.09 billion for the fiscal year ended January 3, 2020. Leidos was cited for the meaningful work employees perform that is challenging, impactful, and aligned with our customers’ missions as reasons professionals want to work and stay at our company. Leidos has also been named to lists including Forbes’ Best Employers for Diversity, Forbes’ America’s Best Employers for Women, Military Times Best for Vets Employers, and Ethisphere Institute’s World's Most Ethical Companies®. Employees enjoy career enrichment opportunities available through mobility and development and experience rewarding relationships with supportive supervisors and talented colleagues and customers. Employees appreciate our flexible work environment, allowing for and encouraging a true work-life balance. Our professionals are also excited about our Employee Resource Groups, like the newly launched Collaborative Outreach with Remote and Embedded Employees (CORE), which strives to create an environment where every employee, regardless of location, feels fully engaged as a valued employee of Leidos. Your most important work is ahead.
