Senior Software Engineer (Digital Engineering & Semantic Data)

Job Description:

Salary Range:

Senior Engineer £45000 - £60000

Leonardo UK operates a grade-based salary framework with broad bands. The salary range shown reflects the approved grade band for this role, or a narrower hiring range published within that band, and is benchmarked against the external market. Exceptions above the standard range are managed through governance controls to protect internal equity.

Your Impact

Are you an experienced software engineer who enjoys tackling complex technical problems? Do you thrive in collaborative environments and want to contribute to the development of new capabilities that have a real impact across a wider business?

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join the GCAP Enablers team and help develop innovative digital engineering capabilities that support the next generation of aerospace programmes. Working as part of a collaborative, multidisciplinary team, you will contribute to the design and development of software solutions that improve how engineering information is created, connected, and used across the product lifecycle.

You will work alongside software engineers, systems engineers, data specialists, and domain experts to solve complex challenges, while having opportunities to learn and apply modern technologies and approaches. This role is ideal for a software craftsman who is motivated by the challenge of building high-abstraction digital environments and is eager to apply their skills to a cutting-edge technical project.

You will help build the digital fabric that connects our distributed engineering landscape. By implementing a graph-based "Digital Thread," you will enable the seamless flow of enriched information across partners and teams, ensuring that our engineering ecosystem is resilient, scalable, and logically consistent.

• Implementing the Digital Thread: Developing software that transforms fragmented data from disparate sources into a unified, ontology-driven Knowledge Graph.
• Enabling Composable Engineering: Building a digital environment where relationships between engineering artefacts are first-class citizens, allowing for flexible and concurrent views of the system.
• Solving Distributed Interoperability: Creating mechanisms that allow tenuously connected environments and partners to contribute to a shared semantic representation without requiring rigid, point-to-point tool integration.
• Driving Strategic Adoption: Contributing to the overall strategy for the wider adoption of Knowledge Graphs and semantic technologies across the business to solve complex data challenges.
• Ensuring Digital Rigour: Implementing the configuration control and concurrency models that ensure the Digital Thread remains a reliable, authoritative source of truth at scale.

What You’ll Do

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will be a key implementer of our digital engineering construct. You will move beyond "glue code" to build a high-abstraction layer based on semantic web principles.

Semantic Implementation & Graph Engineering

• Develop and maintain the software implementation of the Digital Thread using the Semantic Web stack (e.g., RDF, OWL, SPARQL).
• Build and optimise the graph databases and triple stores that house the engineering relationships and enrichments.
• Implement the logic that allows for the "enrichment" of data as it moves through the thread, adding semantic value and context.

Adapter Development & Data Mapping

• Develop tool adapters that map local data schemas to a global ontology, ensuring that tool-specific data is ingested into the graph without losing semantic meaning.
• Focus on "mapping to the model" rather than "mapping to the tool," preventing the proliferation of fragile, point-to-point integrations.

Concurrency & Configuration Control

• Architect and implement the versioning and configuration control mechanisms for the Digital Thread graph, ensuring that changes are traceable and concurrent access is managed.
• Develop software patterns that allow the graph to remain performant and consistent across a large, distributed programme.

Technical Collaboration

• Work closely with the Principal Systems Engineer to translate formal ontologies into performant software implementations.
• Collaborate with other software engineers to ensure the Digital Thread provides the exact enablers they need to achieve quality at pace.

What You’ll Bring

Software Engineering Mastery

• Strong Coding Foundation: Proven expertise in a modern language (e.g., Python, Java, Node, or TypeScript) with a deep commitment to software craftsmanship and clean code.
• Complex Data Experience: Experience handling data from heterogeneous, distributed sources. While experience with the Semantic Web stack (RDF, OWL, SPARQL) or Graph Databases (Neo4j, GraphDB, Stardog, etc.) is highly desirable, we value a strong engineering mindset and a willingness to learn these technologies.
• Distributed Systems Knowledge: An understanding of the challenges associated with "tenuously connected" digital environments and distributed data.
• Software Craftsmanship: A commitment to SOLID principles, maintainable architecture, and automated testing.

Professional Attributes

• A degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• An interest in Knowledge Engineering and the ability to think in terms of relationships and abstractions.
• A mindset that prioritises composability and scalability over quick, hard-coded fixes.

This is not an exhaustive list, and we are keen to hear from you even if you might not have experience in all the above. The most important skill is a good attitude and willingness to learn.

Security Clearance

This role is subject to pre-employment screening in line with the UK Government’s Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS). An additional range of Personnel Security Controls referred to as National Security Vetting (NSV) may apply, this could include meeting the eligibility requirements for The Security Check (SC) or Developed Vetting (DV). For more information and guidance please visit: https://careers.uk.leonardo.com/gb/en/security-and-vetting

Why join us

At Leonardo, our people are at the heart of everything we do. We offer a comprehensive, company-funded benefits package that supports your wellbeing, career development, and work-life balance. Whether you're looking to grow professionally, care for your health, or plan for the future, we’re here to help you thrive.

• Time to Recharge: Enjoy generous leave with the opportunity to accrue up to 12 additional flexi-days each year.
• Secure your Future: Benefit from our award-winning pension scheme with up to 15% employer contribution.
• Your Wellbeing Matters: Free access to mental health support, financial advice, and employee-led networks championing inclusion and diversity (Enable, Pride, Equalise, Armed Forces, Carers, Wellbeing and Ethnicity).
• Rewarding Performance: All employees at management level and below are eligible for our bonus scheme.
• Never Stop Learning: Free access to 4,000+ online courses via Coursera and LinkedIn Learning.
• Refer a friend: Receive a financial reward through our referral programme.
• Tailored Perks: Spend up to £500 annually on flexible benefits including private healthcare, dental, family cover, tech & lifestyle discounts, gym memberships and more.
• Flexible working: Flexible hours are available. This role will include hybrid working with 3 days on-site per week expected. For part time opportunities, please talk to us about what might be possible for this role.

For a full list of our company benefits please visit our website.

Leonardo is a global leader in Aerospace, Defence, and Security. Headquartered in Italy, we employ over 53,000 people worldwide including 8,500 across 9 sites in the UK. Our employees are not just part of a team-they are key contributors to shaping innovation, advancing technology, and enhancing global safety.

At Leonardo we are committed to building an inclusive, accessible, and welcoming workplace. We believe that a diverse workforce sparks creativity, drives innovation, and leads to better outcomes for our people and our customers. If you have any accessibility requirements to support you during the recruitment process, just let us know.

Be part of something bigger - apply now!

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Hybrid Working: