Principal Electrical Engineer

Overview

The Defense Systems Group at Leidos has an opening for a Principal Electrical Engineer in St. Petersburg, FL. This position supports the development, integration, and qualification of advanced defense systems for DoD 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 teams to develop system-level solutions spanning RF, digital, embedded hardware, software, and networked subsystems while ensuring performance, reliability, security, and environmental requirements.

The St. Petersburg facility specializes in 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.

• Lead the technical execution of complex electrical and electronic system development 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.

• 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.

• 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. Doctorate may be considered in lieu of some experience.
• Demonstrated technical expertise in several areas including:
  • 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.

• 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…