Build a career

Grow your career with us

At Leidos, we recognize the value of having a high-performing workforce and are committed to providing opportunities for employees by encouraging career growth and movement across the enterprise.  We view career development as a partnership between employees, managers, and the company with a focus on building skills and experiences through internal mobility. To support career development, we offer a variety of resources in addition to training and educational opportunities within an inclusive environment.

Partnering with employees is essential to understanding career aspirations and aligning passions and interests to career opportunities that serve both the organization and the employee.  We offer a suite of development and training resources to help acquire the skills and experiences that improve job performance and provide a strong foundation for more advanced professional responsibilities. Promoting open and transparent dialogue about career interests and aspirations between managers and employees is key to our approach in identifying developmental opportunities to ensure employee satisfaction and longevity with Leidos.

Managers are empowered to discuss their employee’s career interests in addition to identifying developmental goals through a multitude of learning opportunities such as mentoring, training, coaching, and education.  Attracting, retaining, developing and engaging the most qualified and capable workforce is vital to employee satisfaction and stronger talent for our business.

Be empowered. Be the difference

We prioritise the ongoing development of our people. Not only does it underpin our ability to deliver work that matters for our customers and grow our business, but we firmly believe it’s something every person in our company has the right to expect.

Our aim is to enable every individual to achieve their professional and personal development goals, no matter which direction they’d like to take their careers. And they are not alone. We train our people leaders to support, engage and develop team members and help them achieve their career aspirations.

As a growing organisation, our hard commitment is balanced with a holistic and empowering approach based on the 70:20:10 model. This means 70% of development time happens on the job (exposure to new projects, stretch tasks), 20% near the job (coaching, mentoring or virtual communities) and 10% is off the job (formal courses, access to over 3000 online learning modules, and certifications). 

Our new starters

We know that starting at a new company can be daunting and we want to get our new team members off to a flying start. Our onboarding experience has been developed with the new starter at the front of mind. This means giving new team members the right information at the right time and helping make the transition seamless. It’s all about setting you up for success and helping you thrive. 
 

Our people leaders

At Leidos, we believe everyone deserves a great people leader. Our People Leader Code is a bespoke program which equips our people leaders with all the skills, knowledge and tools they need to help support, engage and develop their teams through meaningful conversations.
 

Communities of practice

As a diverse and multi-site organisation, we work hard to make sure that our people are able to collaborate and learn from people in similar roles. Our Project Management and Technical Core Capability Communities of Practice, in particular, organise regular training sessions and networking events giving likeminded colleagues the chance to develop their knowledge and networks.
 

The Molyneux Memorial scholarship

Every year, we award a $10,000 scholarship to an individual to help their personal development in a way that isn’t available in their day to day role. Previous recipients, for example, have used this bursary to train to be a not-for-profit company director, to spend time organising groups to volunteer at Ronald McDonald House and to find out more about their indigenous family history.
 

Advocacy Groups

Inclusion is a key value here at Leidos and, in Australia, we have a number of busy advocacy groups. These allow like-minded people from across the organisation to compare notes on mutual interests, meet new people and help each other by sharing ideas. The groups currently include our Women & Allies Network, Young Professionals Advocacy Group, PRIDE+, the Defence and Emergency Service Alliance Group, as well as Allies and Action for Accessibility and Abilities.

Learning and development

At Leidos, we focus on enhancing an employee's skills, knowledge, and competency.  We provide a diverse selection of learning opportunities and resources to help you build current skills and develop new skills, including instructor-led, virtual training and many self-paced programs and resources.
 

Skill development

Leidos views skills as the common language for connecting talent at Leidos. In addition to encouraging employees to continue building their skillsets, we focus on upskilling and reskilling our workforce to fill critical roles today and in the future. Large initiatives focused on the newest technologies support both upskilling and reskilling efforts and provide opportunities to grow your career. We focus on building skills that are the most critical to Leidos allowing employees to design careers building activities that align.
 

Personalized learning

Leidos is building a personalized learning experience through automation and integrated content to promote continuous learning.  You will have access to thousands of self-paced courses and online books to support your learning goals, including topics such as information and digital technology, leadership, team performance and many others.

We also offer comprehensive curricula delivered by our own subject matter experts, as well as outside trainers, covering a variety of key company functions including Business Development, Leadership, and Program Management. We have engaged with an external training coordinator to assist employees with research and coordination of training to cover a wide range of titles.
 

Certification opportunities

We offer formal programs to help employees prepare for certifications including Project Management Institute (PMI®) and International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) as well as resources to prepare for over 95 industry-standard professional and technical certifications.

Additionally, we invest in your development through tuition assistance at accredited universities.

Performance development

The Performance Management process at Leidos was revamped in 2020 based on feedback from employees and managers that highlighted the need for more frequent conversations around performance and career development, a greater emphasis on behaviors, individual career aspirations, and organizational results and tools for managers to engage in more productive conversations with employees. As a result, we evolved from a Performance Management process to a Performance Development process - an ongoing cycle throughout the year, every year, and embedded into the business rhythm, focused on three components:

1. Performance Planning – Setting Goals that define Expectations of Performance with Employees focused on Results (what you should do), Impact (why your efforts matter – connected to team, customer or organizational goals) and Behaviors (how you should perform – the display of the Leidos Values).
2. Performance Check-Ins – Ongoing touch points throughout the year to check progress against goals or expectations set, provide feedback and coaching and discuss career development and career aspiration goals. Leaders are asked to conduct Check-Ins at least quarterly, which include conversations around performance, career development, engagement, etc.
3. Performance Assessment – A review of total performance contribution with an assessment that links back to Performance Planning by looking at Results, Impact and Behaviors. All employees receive a performance review annually. 

People leader goal

As part of the Performance Development process, and foundational to our approach for developing leaders at all levels, are the Leidos Values and People Leader Goals. The People Leader Goal supports managers in continuing to make Leidos a place where current employees are passionate, engaged, and highly productive; future employees are eager and excited to be part of Leidos, and our customers seek to engage with us because of the way we work with them and with each other.

Developing leaders

Over the course of our company’s history, our people—their efforts and ideas—have been the key catalyst for successful innovation and growth. Having strong leaders is a differentiator for us from our competitors; it’s how we “show up” as we work with each other, our customers, our teaming partners, and suppliers.

We invest in our current and future leaders in a number of ways:

• The Leidos Leadership Program (LLP) sets out to develop effective, inclusive leaders at every level that leverage diverse talent, ideas, and innovative solutions to enable its business strategy. The program integrates peer learning, networking, and simulation experiences aligned to support our overall business strategy and vision, mission, values and to develop Leidos leaders of the future. 
• Our Manager Essentials Program, required for all new managers, focuses on management skills in seven core areas. Through virtual experiential learning, participants are able to apply newly gained knowledge to maximize the effectiveness of their teams and to make networking connections with other new managers in similar situations.
• Mid-level managers can participate in a cohort-based, Virtual Program that encourages the cultivation of an ethical culture within Leidos. This semester-long program is focused on further developing the capabilities of our leaders in change agility and collaboration across the enterprise. 
• Our senior leaders participate in an Executive Education Cohort that includes a variety of strategic topics as well as an immersive simulation activity related to driving better business outcomes. By the end of 2021, all senior leaders will have completed the program, forming a collective leadership outlook.

We offer development for every level of leader in numerous ways: formal training, on the job learning, job rotations, virtual courses (e-learning), and in-person events with high profile guest speakers, including our first Women’s Leadership Forum and the African American Leidos Network (AALN) Leadership Forum. Leidos also holds an annual two-day Leadership Summit for our 300 most senior managers aligning business strategy, transformation initiatives, keynote speakers, alongside the importance of creating an ethical culture within their organizations, and the myriad of resources available to assist them in doing so.
 

Succession planning

The annual succession planning process at Leidos identifies and develops high-potential employees at all levels of the organization. Succession plans are created for all Executive-level positions, e.g. roles one and two levels below the CEO, as well as for roles throughout the organization considered vital to the organization’s success. Development and engagement plans are created for top talent comprised of formal and informal training, mentoring, coaching and experiential learning opportunities.

Feedback and recognition

A key part of feedback is formal and informal recognition, so employees are aware of and inspired by award-winning teams and projects. The Leidos Achievement Awards program annually recognizes extraordinary contributions made by individuals or teams in achieving Leidos’ mission, vision, and organization goals while demonstrating the Company’s core values of integrity, innovation, inclusion, agility, collaboration, and commitment. These awards recognize the contributions of individuals who act with courage to uphold their personal and professional integrity and question actions that do not uphold Leidos’ values. 

All employees are eligible to participate in the enterprise-wide annual recognition program.  Further, our business groups have their own quarterly recognition programs, highlighting award winners on our Intranet and providing recipients with prizes.
 

Employee Surveys

Effectively engaging with our employees across the globe is a critical priority for Leidos, ensuring feedback is truly two-way. Attracting, retaining, and taking care of our employees is an integral part of our business strategy. To best care for employees and reduce turnover, we take a data-driven approach, going directly to employees via annual employee engagement surveys and regular pulse surveys. 

Pulse surveys take place on a quarterly basis.  The inaugural annual engagement survey was launched in Q4 of 2019 and will continue on an annual rhythm every Spring starting in 2021.

Learn more about Employee Engagement Surveys