Defense Unicorns seeks a Senior Software Engineer to work on our core products. You’ll collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and end users to ensure we’re building the right solutions—and building them well.
The team enables Platform Engineers to securely build, deploy, and operate mission-critical applications in regulated and disconnected environments by providing the core platform and tooling that power UDS.
As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll operate at the intersection of product development and technical execution. You’ll lead the design, implementation, and deployment of features and systems that have direct impact on mission outcomes.
Responsibilities:
- Work with engineers internal to the company, and within the open source community on feature and bug fix requests
- Proactively identify and resolve ambiguity in product requirements
- Comfortable in an asynchronous, all remote environment
- Actively participate in communities of practice via Slack and Github Issues
- Integrate software products with existing defense systems, ensuring seamless interoperability and adherence to security protocols
- Own architecture decisions and ensure technical quality across the engineering team
- Develop comprehensive documentation, including design specifications, user manuals, and maintenance guides
- Stay abreast of emerging technologies and industry trends to inform product enhancements and innovation.
- Provide technical mentorship and elevate engineering standards across the team
- Influence product direction through deep understanding of user needs and system constraints
- Participates in a shared 24x7 on-call rotation, owning incident response, troubleshooting, and coordination to ensure reliable production systems
Travel Expectations/Requirements: 5-15%
The listed responsibilities are not exhaustive and additional responsibilities may be assigned based on the evolving needs of the organization. We are seeking a dynamic individual who is able to adapt and take on new responsibilities as they arise.
Preferred Experience and Qualifications:- 5+ years (Senior) experience with software engineering
- Experience using Git and GitHub in collaborative environments
- Experience building and operating software products
- Proficiency in a modern programming language (Golang and/or TypeScript preferred)
- Experience with infrastructure as code using OpenTofu or Terraform
- Strong understanding of system design, APIs, databases, and cloud architecture (e.g., AWS, Azure)
- Ability to assess complex problems, propose pragmatic solutions, and drive them to completion
- Experience developing CLIs, Kubernetes Operators, and/or OpenTofu providers is a plus
- Familiar with Core Kubernetes Concepts including but not limited to Controllers, Operators, and CRDs
- Experience contributing to or collaborating with Open Source Projects (e.g., CNCF, ASF, OpenSSF) is a plus
- Strong communication and collaboration skills, comfortable conveying technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences
- Experience working proactively, managing time efficiently, and thriving in a vibrant remote work environment ✨🦄
Don’t have all the preferred experience or qualifications? Studies show that underrepresented groups like women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs if they don't meet every requirement listed. At Defense Unicorns, we're committed to diversity. If you're enthusiastic about the role but don't match every criteria, we encourage you to apply. You could be the perfect fit for this or another role! Defense Unicorns is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, veteran status, genetic information, union status and/or beliefs, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.
Full compensation packages are based on candidate experience. Compensation ranges are established using national benchmarking data and apply across all geographic locations within the United States.
Defense Unicorns delivers mission value by streamlining software delivery so our customers can focus on the most important challenges. We share a vision of freedom and security for the advancement of progress and innovation. Our commitment to this vision, and to our mission-driven customers, means a commitment to speed, user experience and optionality, without compromising security. Our team is composed of innovators, software engineers, and veterans with decades of experience delivering technology programs across the federal market.
What We DoWe create and deliver secure solutions for continuous software integration and delivery. Defense Unicorns consolidates the best practices for security pipelines, testing, and deployment automation in order to meet the high security requirements valued by mission owners. Our solutions are agnostic by design and we believe that growing a robust ecosystem of secure, cloud-native software solutions can help enterprise customers inside and outside the federal market buy and integrate software more easily.
Who We ServeDefense Unicorns’ customers are mission-focused leaders across public and private enterprises. We proudly support defense and civil agencies across the U.S. government and we work closely with the creators of leading-edge software solutions to deliver value to the mission-owner by improving the security and consumability of commercial software products.
What We Work On- Kubernetes
- Cloud Environments (AWS/GCP and Azure)
- Infrastructure-as-code (like Terraform/Pulumi)
- Continuous Delivery and automation tooling
- GitOps
- Containers
- CNCF projects and open source products and packages
- Helm/Kustomize-Value Stream Mapping
- Building and improving security delivery
- Building Kubernetes and cloud native applications
- Medical/Dental/Vision
- Premiums are 100% Company Paid
- Health Savings Account
- Life Insurance
- Disability Insurance
- 401k Retirement Plan
- Company Stock Options
- Home Office Budget
- We offer all full-time Unicorns Flexible Time Off (FTO) plus all Federal Holidays, one week for Thanksgiving, and two weeks for Christmas and New Year’s
- Paid Parental Leave
- Reimbursement for approved trainings/subscriptions
- Conferences (travel, lodging, and fees)
Don’t have all the preferred experience or qualifications? Studies show that underrepresented groups like women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs if they don't meet every requirement listed.
At Defense Unicorns, we're committed to diversity. If you're enthusiastic about the role but don't match every criteria, we encourage you to apply. You could be the perfect fit for this or another role! Defense Unicorns is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, veteran status, genetic information, union status and/or beliefs, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.
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