Chief Solution Architect, National Solutions Growth
Leidos· enterprise· Defense· Oct 26, 2026 · 2d ago
Gaithersburg MD
Hybrid
Full-time
Principal
$154K–$278K
15+ years exp
Job description
Help Architect the Future of Intelligence. Lead the Teams That Will Deliver It.
Leidos is seeking an exceptional Chief Solution Architect to lead solution architecture across our National Solutions Business Area, supporting some of the nation s most consequential intelligence and national security missions. This is a rare opportunity to shape the technical direction of major pursuits while building the team of architects responsible for turning bold ideas into winning, mission-ready solutions.
Our customers face extraordinary challenges: exponential growth in intelligence data, increasingly complex space and ground architectures, and rapidly evolving threats. Meeting these challenges demands bold architectural thinking and innovative, integrated solutions that transform vast amounts of information into actionable intelligence at mission speed.
Reporting directly to the National Solutions Chief Technology Officer , you will lead and inspire our cadre of Solution Architects, establish the architectural standards that distinguish our offerings, and personally drive the technical strategy for our most important pursuits. You will operate at the intersection of advanced technology, mission strategy, and business growth, transforming emerging capabilities in Agentic AI, multi-intelligence fusion, cloud-native systems, and advanced geospatial intelligence exploitation into tomorrow s operational capabilities.
We are looking for more than an accomplished architect. We want a technical visionary who challenges conventional thinking, inspires exceptional engineers, and turns complex mission challenges into solutions that win—and deliver. If you are driven to shape the future of intelligence while developing the next generation of technical leaders, this is your opportunity to make a lasting impact.
Primary Responsibilities:
As Chief Solution Architect, you will translate technical vision into decisive action—leading talented architects, shaping strategic pursuits, and ensuring our solutions are as executable as they are innovative. Your responsibilities will include:
Build and inspire an exceptional architecture team: Lead, coach, mentor, and develop assigned Solution Architects, creating a culture of curiosity, ownership, technical rigor, and customer focus. Establish priorities and development plans, support recruiting and succession, and recognize and cultivate eme rging technical leaders.
Put our strongest minds against our most important missions: Partner with the CTO, Capture Managers, and business development leaders to align architect capacity and specialist surge support to opportunity timing, technical complexity, customer needs, and business priorities.
Personally architect the opportunities that matter most: Serve as lead architect or senior technical authority on selected strategic pursuits. Transform mission challenges and acquisition requirements into coherent end-toend solutions, compelling differentiators, executable delivery approaches, and clear technical narratives.
Set the standard for winning, executable solutions: Lead rigorous yet practical solution reviews, architecture trade studies, independent assessments, and technical risk reduction. Challenge assumptions constructively and help teams balance innovation, interoperability, mission effectiveness, security, cost, schedule, and delivery risk.
Make technical superiority unmistakable in proposals: Partner with capture and proposal leaders to translate Sections L and M, evaluation criteria, mission priorities, and competitive context into compliant, persuasive technical approaches, discriminators, demonstrations, and credible proposal content.
Connect bold ideas to mission outcomes: Guide analyses of alternatives, make/buy and teaming decisions, technical bases of estimate, lifecycle affordability, architecture evolution, and engineering trades. Ensure the promise made during capture can be delivered by program teams.
Multiply our advantage through reuse: Promote open interfaces, modular and composable architectures, reference patterns, interoperable services, reusable proposal assets, and cross-program lessons learned that accelerate both solution development and mission delivery. The information in this document is proprietary to Leidos. It may not be used, reproduced, disclosed, or exported without the written approval of Leidos. Leidos Proprietary
Turn innovation into real capture advantage: Collaborate with the CTO, IRAD leaders, product and engineering teams, Technical Fellows, operating programs, and partners to move advances in AI, analytics, data architectures, GEOINT exploitation, resilient systems, and automation from investment to demonstration to mission-ready solutions.
Earn trust with senior mission customers: Engage government technical leaders, mission stakeholders, Leidos executives, and industry partners to understand operational challenges, communicate architectural vision and tradeoffs, and build confidence in our ability to deliver consequential capabilities.
Bridge winning the work and delivering the mission: Lead technical capture-to-execution transitions, validate architecture assumptions, and provide independent technical insight or focused recovery support when critical programs encounter difficult engineering challenges.
Unite talent across organizational boundaries: Bring together systems and software engineering, cyber, AI/data, mission SMEs, R&D, product teams, commercial partners, and small businesses into high-performing, integrated technical teams while maintaining clear accountability across capture and program leadership.
Continuously elevate our solutioning discipline: Establish useful measures for architecture quality, proposal readiness, review closure, capacity, technical talent development, solution reuse, mission relevance, and capture-to-execution fidelity. Use evidence and feedback to improve how the organization wins.
Basic Qualifications:
The successful candidate will combine substantial architectural and systems engineering experience with demonstrated capture success and leadership of high-performing technical teams. To be considered for this position, you must meet the following qualifications:
Education and Experience: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related technical discipline and 15 years of relevant experience.
Capture Architecture Leadership: Demonstrated technical leadership in major federal, defense, or Intelligence Community captures, including developing or directing complex architectures, shaping differentiated technical approaches, and contributing substantially to technical proposals or customer presentations.
Technical Team Leadership: Demonstrated experience managing, directing, or leading senior architects, engineers, or multidisciplinary technical teams, including mentoring, prioritization, technical review, performance input, and development of technical talent.
Enterprise Architecture and Systems Engineering: Substantial lifecycle systems engineering and architecture experience with large software-intensive or distributed mission systems, including technical planning, integration, modernization, operational support, risk management, and engineering-cost tradeoffs.
Modern Technology Fluency: Demonstrated ability to evaluate and lead solutioning involving contemporary cloud, hybrid/edge, distributed systems, data/AI, secure integration, and modern software -delivery approaches, including appropriate use of specialists to resolve implementation-level decisions.
Federal Proposal Development: Demonstrated experience interpreting federal acquisition requirements, leading technical proposal development, creating compliant and differentiated solution narratives, supporting cost/technical estimates, and briefing senior customers or review teams.
Executive Communication and Collaboration: A bility to communicate with senior mission customers and executive leaders and to coordinate multidisciplinary teams across capture, business development, programs, IRAD, and external partners under demanding deadlines.
Security Clearance: Must possess an active TS/SCI security clearance and meet applicable customer-access requirements. Any required polygraph type, currency, and program-specific accesses will be confirmed by Leidos Security before posting and prior to assignment.
Preferred Qualifications:
Beyond the foundational requirements, we value candidates who bring distinctive mission experience, demonstrated capture success, advanced technical expertise, and a record of transforming innovation into operational capability. Particularly valuable qualifications include:
Intelligence Community Mission Expertise: including GEOINT production, geospatial analytics, sensor-to-user workflows, ground systems, satellite mission support, command and control, or operational intelligence systems.
Major Capture Track Record: Documented record of technically leading, substantially shaping, or materially supporting successful major federal captures, with clear explanation of individual responsibility, competition, award size, and technical impact.
Architecture Workforce Management: Experience leading a sustained solution engineering or architecture workforce, including hiring, mentoring, resource balancing, architecture reviews, and performance management.
Modular and Data Architectures: Experience with open architectures, modular capability composition, APIs, distributed systems, data interoperability, geospatial information systems, ontology/semantic approaches, or data mesh/fabric patterns.
Applied AI and Mission Automation: Experience incorporating emerging technologies such as AI/ML, Generative AI, computer vision, agentic workflows, edge analytics, or mission automation into demonstrable and supportable solutions.
Secure Space and Edge Systems: Experience with space/ground architectures, hybrid cloud and edge environments, ICAM, zero trust, cyber resilience, cross-domain operations, or resource constrained/disconnected deployments.
Systems Engineering and Technology Transition: Experience with architecture frameworks, model-based systems engineering, technical roadmapping, technical baselines, lifecycle cost optimization, and transition of research or pilot capabilities into operational products.
Prototyping and Solution Development: Experience leading solution co-creation, rapid prototypes, proof-of-concept demonstrations, systems or software development, or research and development that resulted in operational adoption or measurable business outcomes.
IRAD and Strategic Partnerships: Experience directing or integrating sizable IRAD portfolios, forming technology partnerships, working with small businesses and universities, and transforming investment outcomes into customer demonstrations or capture discriminators.
Advanced Credentials: Advanced degree, formal architecture/capture credentials, or enterprise-recognized technical leadership credentials are valued but not required.
Position Impact
This is more than a senior architecture assignment. It is an opportunity to help define how Leidos National Solutions competes, innovates, and delivers for the Intelligence Community—and to develop the next generation of architects who will carry that mission forward. If you are energized by consequential technical challenges, enjoy turning innovative concepts into practical solutions, and take pride in helping exceptional teams accomplish more than they could alone, we invite you to help shape what comes next.
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: October 26, 2026
For 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.
Pay Range: Pay Range $154,050.00 - $278,475.00
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.
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