Defense Unicorns is seeking Software Engineers (Mid and Senior) to join our UDS Product Engineering team. You’ll collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and end users to ensure we’re building the right solutions, and building them well.
As a Software Engineer, you’ll operate at the intersection of product development and technical execution. You’ll contribute to and, at times, lead the design, implementation, and deployment of features and systems that have direct impact on mission outcomes. Our engineers work across a portfolio that includes
- UDS Registry — reliably manage and deploy UDS packages to any mission environment
- Zarf — an open source tool enabling continuous software delivery on disconnected systems
- Fleet — manage distributed systems across Denied, Disrupted, Intermittent, and Limited (DDIL) and fully airgapped environments
- UDS Image Factory — developer tooling for composing complete, mission-ready system images (OS, Kubernetes, applications, configuration) into a single deployable artifact
- UDS Foundation — core platform and tooling that power UDS, serving Platform Engineers building and operating UDS across environments
The UDS Product Engineering team values action, ownership, and focus, taking initiative to see work through from idea to impact.
How You’ll Contribute:Mid-level Software Engineer:
- Deliver high-quality, production-ready code with strong testing and reliability practices
- Own well-scoped features and systems end-to-end
- Contribute to design discussions and implementation decisions
- Navigate ambiguity with increasing independence
- Build deep understanding of the systems and domains you work in
Senior Software Engineer:
- Lead design and implementation of complex systems across teams
- Own and be accountable for systems or major components end-to-end
- Drive technical direction and influence product decisions
- Operate effectively in ambiguity and define clear paths forward
- Mentor other engineers and elevate engineering standards
- Build, ship, and maintain features and systems that support mission-critical environments
- Contribute to system design, architecture, and implementation decisions
- Collaborate with engineering, product, and design to translate requirements into scalable technical solutions
- Identify and reduce ambiguity in product and technical requirements
- Debug, optimize, and support production systems (including on-call rotation)
- Integrate with existing defense systems while ensuring interoperability and security compliance
- Contribute to and support the open source ecosystems we depend on
- Develop and maintain technical documentation (designs, runbooks, user guides)
- Participates in a shared 24x7 on-call rotation, owning incident response, troubleshooting, and coordination to ensure reliable production systems
Additionally, Senior Software Engineers will:
- Own architectural decisions and ensure technical quality across systems
- Lead cross-team initiatives and complex technical efforts
- Influence product direction through deep user and system understanding
- Provide mentorship and raise the bar for engineering practices
Travel Expectations/Requirements: 0-5%
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:- 3+ years (Mid) or 5+ years (Senior) experience in software engineering
- Proficiency in Go or other modern programming languages
- Strong understanding of system design, APIs, databases, and cloud environments (AWS, Azure, etc.)
- Experience building tools focused on software lifecycle and delivery
- Familiarity with Kubernetes concepts (Controllers, Operators, CRDs)
- Experience with supply chain security (SBOMs, signing, scanning, etc.)
- Experience contributing to open source projects (CNCF, ASF, OpenSSF, etc.) is a strong plus
- Ability to solve complex problems and deliver pragmatic, scalable solutions
- Strong communication and collaboration skills across technical and non-technical audiences
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 Reimbursement 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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