Python Software Engineer
00100 LEIDOS, INC. · 3025 Gaithersburg, MD
$87,100–$157,450from the description
Jul 1, 2026
3025 Gaithersburg, MD
Jul 20, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A mid-level software engineering role focused on building and maintaining surface traffic management software for the FAA's air traffic control modernization program. Day-to-day work spans Python-heavy backend development, structured data handling, CI/CD pipeline work, and integration of AI tooling, alongside front-end contributions and automated testing. Suits engineers with broad full-stack experience who are comfortable in Agile, Linux, and DevOps environments.
Mid level · 5+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · Bachelor's required · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 500 people in the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 150–750
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $158,337 (middle half $126,441–$180,105). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (10)
The posting titles this role 'mid-level Python Software Engineer' and the 5+ years of combined modern software development experience aligns with a Mid-level band.
The role requires a Public Trust security clearance (US citizenship or Permanent Residency required), but Public Trust is not a national-security clearance in the DoD sense — it is a suitability determination. No Confidential/Secret/TS clearance is gated, so the clearance requirement is set to None.
The 5+ years figure is stated at the role level for 'modern software development (Python, Java, PHP)' — treated as the overall experience floor. The 2+ years of web/front-end experience is a secondary gate but subsumed by the 5-year overall requirement.
Python, Java, and PHP are listed together as interchangeable options for the 5-year experience requirement; Python is the primary named language throughout the posting and is captured as the lead skill with Java and PHP as alternatives.
LLMs and AI-Assisted Development (Generative AI, RAG, AI agents, prompt engineering, AI MCP servers) are listed under Basic Qualifications as a required experience area; LLMs is used as the canonical skill name covering this cluster.
Terraform and Docker appear in the Responsibilities section (stack/context narrative) rather than the Required Skills section, so they are marked preferred.
Ansible appears in both the Responsibilities narrative and the Desired Skills section; it is marked preferred.
The Desired Skills section is clearly labeled as secondary/optional; all skills drawn from it are marked preferred.
GeoPandas is listed as the lead skill for the geospatial Python libraries cluster (Fiona, Pillow, PyTesseract, XMLDiff) under Desired Skills; only GeoPandas is emitted as representative of that cluster to avoid over-listing niche library names.
The alternative occupation runner-up (15-1211 Computer Systems Analysts) reflects the FAA/air-traffic domain integration and data-transformation emphasis, but the primary day-to-day work is clearly software development.
Read the full posting
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