Leidos has a career opportunity for a Program Startup Director within the Leidos Defense Sector (DS) business. At Leidos Defense, we deliver innovative solutions across every domain, from sea floor to space by leveraging decades of expertise in areas like autonomous systems, hypersonic, and integrated air and missile defense.  We empower the Department of War to achieve operational excellence and maintain a decisive advantage in an ever evolving threat landscape.

The PS Director ensures Leidos programs have the foundation for successful execution after award and has a robust understanding of Leidos policies and procedures, in particular the ATO policy, Program Execution procedures and the Win Plan. They maintain an understanding of Leidos Defense Sector captures and new contract awards, engaging with capture teams to deliver competitive bids built upon an executable solution. After submission, the PS Director helps provide continuity between the capture and program teams by leading and/or supporting pre-award activities and program startup.

During the capture phase, the PS Director works with the capture team and the functional leadership of the Business Area and/or Sector to ensure the bid solution is built upon a solid foundation for execution success (e.g. high quality BOEs, meaningful cost, technical and schedule baselines, robust risk register and mitigation approaches, clear supplier and material management approach, approaches for contractual terms and conditions, thoughtful PMP). The PS Director owns the Bid Risk Review process and recommends a bid / no-bid based on their assessment of risk, including recommendations and next steps when needed to increase likelihood of successful program startup and execution. When applicable, the PS Director leads an independent team to perform an independent cost estimate to improve understanding of the risk to execute at the price-to-win target. The PS Director will also participate and provide support during pre-award (capture phases) in technical readiness reviews (TRRs), execution planning reviews (XPRs), and bid approval reviews (BARs) as well as proposal content review and generation.

After bid submission, the PS Director tracks and works bid approval actions and recommendations in anticipation of award. After award, the PS Director supports the program team by facilitating execution of the program startup checklist and helping to convert the solution baselines into an integrated program baseline (ex. creating control accounts from BOEs).

Additional duties include:

• Support other Performance Excellence team members as needed with program startup, assist, recovery and oversight
• Mentoring and training of program managers. Training may include one on-one mentoring or sessions in the form of Brown Bag Lunchtime Learning sessions as well as the generation and delivery of training material for new PMs
• Review of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), teaming agreements and other contractual documents for the purpose of understanding implications to program risk.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree and 15+ years of program / project management experience, which should include cost estimating, budget management, schedule development, Earned Value Management, risk mitigation and risk monetization.
• Excellent MS Excel, Word, PowerPoint, SharePoint and PowerBI skills.
• Experience working on complex new business pursuits, specifically on developing executable program baselines pre-award.
• Experience leading a team to perform an independent bid risk review and cost estimate to validate capture team’s submission price risk.
• Robust understanding of how to write thorough Basis of Estimates (BOEs) and Program Management Plans.
• Strong customer presentation, verbal and written communication skills.
• PMP certification or equivalent
• Must be a US Citizen and meet the eligibility to obtain and maintain a Top Secret Clearance (active Top Secret clearance is preferred).

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:

March 2, 2026

Pay Range:

Pay Range $139,100.00 - $251,450.00

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.