Principal Software Engineer; DevSecOps

Principal Software Engineer (Dev Sec Ops ) - Salary Range: £54,000 - £70,000

As a Principal Software Engineer (Dev Sec Ops ), you will play a key role in accelerating the delivery of secure, high-quality software across Leonardo's defence and security programmes. You will help shape and evolve our enterprise Dev Sec Ops  capability, enabling teams to deliver features and updates rapidly, reliably and securely. Working within our software engineering community, you will champion modern engineering practices, drive automation, and embed security throughout the software development lifecycle.

Through your technical leadership and mentoring, you will help build a collaborative Dev Sec Ops  culture focused on innovation, continuous improvement and operational excellence.

• Contribute to the delivery and evolution of Leonardo's enterprise-wide Dev Sec Ops  platform.
• Support and mentor teams adopting Dev Sec Ops  practices, tools and ways of working.
• Contribute to the planning and implementation of Dev Sec Ops  capabilities across cloud, on‑premises and hybrid environments.
• Design, deploy and maintain development, test and operational environments.
• Drive automation across software delivery and infrastructure provisioning to improve quality, consistency and efficiency.
• Develop and maintain automation frameworks, CI/CD pipelines and deployment processes.
• Apply effective change, configuration and release management practices.
• Support deployed services, ensuring high levels of performance, security and availability.
• Collaborate with engineers, platform teams and stakeholders to improve delivery capability and engineering practices.
• Champion secure‑by‑design principles across the software development lifecycle.

• Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering or related discipline.
• Experience delivering software solutions within a complex engineering environment.
• Experience designing, building and operating secure‑by‑design environments.
• Hands‑on experience with Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) practices and tooling.
• Knowledge of cloud, on‑premises and hybrid environments, including security considerations.
• Experience with enterprise Dev Ops and Dev Sec Ops  tools supporting modern software delivery.
• Background in software engineering, platform engineering, IT operations or related discipline.
• Experience with requirements management, configuration management and version control tools.
• Knowledge of infrastructure‑as‑code, automation and deployment technologies.
• Experience working within Agile development environments.
• Strong communication skills with ability to mentor and influence technical teams.
• Passion for automation, continuous improvement and engineering excellence.

This role is subject to pre‑employment screening in line with the UK Government’s Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS). Additional range of Personnel Security Controls referred to as National Security Vetting (NSV) may apply, including The Security Check (SC) or Developed Vetting (DV).

Primary

Location:

Luton (Cap. Green 300). Additional Locations:
Basildon, Edinburgh, Lincoln, Newcastle, Southampton. Contract Type:
Permanent. Working arrangement:
Hybrid.

We are committed to building an inclusive, accessible and welcoming workplace. We believe that a diverse workforce sparks creativity, drives innovation and leads to better outcomes for our people and our customers.