Principal Electrical Engineer

The Defense Systems Group at Leidos has an immediate opening for a Principal Electrical Engineer at our St. Petersburg, FL facility. This position supports the development, integration, and qualification of advanced, mission-critical defense systems for Department of Defense and national security customers.

In this role, you will serve as a senior technical contributor and engineering lead, supporting the design, integration, and verification of complex electronic and communications systems. You will collaborate with multidisciplinary engineering teams to develop system-level solutions spanning RF, digital, embedded hardware, software, and networked subsystems while ensuring performance, reliability, security, and environmental requirements are achieved.

The St. Petersburg facility specializes in the design, modeling, simulation, prototyping, integration, and testing of advanced electronic systems, with emphasis on embedded communications, Software Defined Radios (SDR), phased array antenna systems, and secure RF architectures supporting defense and select commercial customers.

Primary Responsibilities

• Lead the technical execution of complex electrical and electronic system development efforts from concept through integration, qualification, and field deployment.
• Develop system and subsystem architectures, perform technical trade studies, and evaluate design alternatives considering performance, cost, schedule, manufacturability, technical risk, and lifecycle supportability.
• Support system requirements development, decomposition, interface definition, verification planning, and requirements traceability.
• Perform system-level analysis, functional analysis, interface analysis, timeline analysis, and integration planning across multiple engineering disciplines.
• Collaborate with RF, digital, FPGA, embedded software, mechanical, systems, and test engineers to ensure successful system integration and verification.
• Support hardware/software integration, system verification and validation (V&V), environmental qualification, and customer acceptance testing.
• Develop and review technical documentation including system architectures, interface control documents (ICDs), verification plans, test procedures, engineering analyses, and technical reports.
• Participate in technical design reviews including SRR, PDR, CDR, TRR, and customer technical interchange meetings (TIMs).
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior engineers while supporting engineering best practices and design quality.
• Interface with customers, subcontractors, suppliers, and internal program leadership to resolve technical issues and support program execution.
• Support business development activities by contributing to technical proposals, white papers, RFI/RFP responses, Basis of Estimate (BOE) development, and technology roadmaps.

Clearance Requirements

• U.S. Citizenship required.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Secret Security Clearance.
• Active Secret clearance strongly preferred.
• Ability to obtain and maintain Top Secret clearance preferred.
• Willingness to work in classified laboratory environments and support secure program activities as required.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or related discipline with 8–12 years of relevant experience, or Master's degree with 6–10 years of relevant experience. A Doctorate in a related technical discipline may be considered in lieu of some experience.
• Demonstrated technical expertise in several of the following areas:
  • RF and microwave systems
  • Embedded communications systems
  • Software Defined Radios (SDR)
  • Digital and mixed-signal electronics
  • Power supply and power distribution design
  • Antenna systems
  • Wireless communications and networking
  • System integration and verification
• Strong understanding of modern communications systems including waveform architectures, modulation techniques, RF propagation, link budgets, spectrum management, bandwidth allocation, and networking concepts.
• Experience performing system-level engineering activities including requirements analysis, trade studies, integration planning, and verification.
• Experience leading technical tasks or engineering work packages across multidisciplinary teams.
• Experience supporting formal technical reviews including SRR, PDR, CDR, TRR, and customer technical meetings.
• Proven ability to evaluate engineering solutions considering technical performance, cost, schedule, manufacturability, and program risk.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to interface effectively with customers, program leadership, and multidisciplinary engineering teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Active Secret or Top Secret Security Clearance.
• Experience with phased array antenna systems, RF front-end architectures, beamforming, or advanced communication waveforms.
• Experience with Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), SysML, or architecture modeling tools.
• Hands-on experience with:
• RF, analog, and digital hardware design
• Schematic capture and PCB layout
• FPGA development (VHDL or Verilog)
• Environmental qualification testing (EMI/EMC, vibration, thermal, shock)
• MATLAB, Python, LabVIEW, or similar engineering analysis tools
• Experience using laboratory instrumentation including vector network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, oscilloscopes, signal generators, logic analyzers, power meters, and automated RF test equipment.
• Experience supporting DoD acquisition programs, classified development efforts, and system integration laboratories.

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:

Pay Range:

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.