Principal Fellow, Materials Innovation

R-00157892

Description

The Leidos Innovations Center currently has an opening for a Principal Technical Fellow for Materials Innovation.  This is an exciting opportunity to direct the development of disruptive materials that could be integrated into future space and maritime systems –business areas in which Leidos is transforming the payloads solutions for the future. 

As a Principal Technical Fellow, you will directly support a rapidly growing sector within the Division by developing new concepts and efforts to design, develop, and demonstrate new advanced materials that could yield disruptive performance improvements to sensor systems and assets, and potentially enable entirely new capabilities.

Your responsibilities would initially be in leading internally- and externally-funded efforts in new materials development and driving materials innovation in existing Leidos business areas. Additional responsibilities will include building materials innovation strategies for new business areas, including ideation, client engagements, securing internal R&D (IRAD) funding to build IP, and proposal preparation and submission for securing new contract R&D (CRAD) efforts.  Additional responsibilities will likely include hiring technical talent to working on novel concepts and may include the opportunity to serve as a supervisor.

This position is an on-site role located in San Diego, CA. There may be some opportunity to telework.

Primary Responsibilities

• Leading advanced materials research and development efforts to include metamaterials and metasurfaces, nanophotonics, solid-state devices, radar and antenna systems, and structural materials.
• Serve as Principal Investigator for materials R&D efforts, leading science and engineering teams from modeling and simulation, fabrication, assembly and characterization to rapidly evaluate, integrate, and deploy material technologies
• Leverage expertise in modeling tools to explore and define new concepts for IRAD efforts that would yield discriminating technical solutions for future CRAD opportunities
• Build and lead partnerships with internal Leidos teams and external partners to investigate and mature materials, and develop a pipeline to transition them to production and integration
• Lead capture strategy for contract R&D for materials innovations, from client engagement, ideation, to proposal development to secure future CRAD opportunities, and successfully transition prototypes to sectors.

Basic Qualifications

• Master's degree in Physics, Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering or related technical areas with 15+ years of relevant experience or Doctorate in above mentioned technical areas with 13+ years of relevant experience
• Must be a U.S. Citizen
• Must be have the ability to obtain and maintain a Secret security clearance
• Mission oriented with a strong ability leading inter-disciplinary teams towards goals and deliver solutions that address challenging DoD problems.
• 8+ years of experience leading materials R&D efforts, serving as Principal Investigator and leading ideation of research goals
• 10+ years of experience developing strong technical solutions and proposals to meet CRAD solicitation requirements and metrics
• 13+ years of experience with finite element-based design tools such as COMSOL, CST, or Lumerical
• Excellent communication skills and proven ability to work directly with customers and deliver results
• Proficient with technical writing, documentation, and organization
• Robust sense of initiative, a self-starter who can work independently

Preferred Qualifications

• Active Secret security clearance
• Experience in building technical efforts in new business areas and increasing revenue
• Experience with profit and loss management

LInC
Original Posting: April 21, 2025
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 $148,850.00 - $269,075.00

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.