Role Description:
Defense Unicorns is seeking a talented and versatile Platform Cloud Engineer to enable Defense Unicorns to work within a self-managed production environment. The ideal candidate will be responsible for not only contributing to the development and maintenance of Defense Unicorns’ capabilities but also for providing professional services to assist customers in integrating, building, and expanding the footprint of the product within their organizations. This position demands a strong technical background, excellent problem-solving skills, and the ability to bridge the gap between product development and customer needs.
Responsibilities:
- Operate and maintain Production UDS Cloud Environment (Kubernetes and our UDS “baseline” of tools we deliver to our Mission Heroes/Customers) to support other teams operating within that environment.
- Develop and maintain a secure, scalable, and observable environment based on Infrastructure-as-Code.
- Participate in on-call rotation to address any Production impacting incidents (business hours only for now)
- Design and implement observability tooling to aid teams owning and operating their own software within our production environment in diagnosing their own Production Impacting incidents.
- Excellent leadership and communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
Travel Expectations/Requirements: 10 - 20%
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 experience with operating production cloud-native systems within the Kubernetes ecosystem
- Proficiency in IaC particularly with Terraform or OpenTofu
- Experience with automation in a language like Golang or Python
- Experience with CI/CD methodologies and systems like GitLab Runners or GitHub Actions
- Experience in building and operating Observability Platforms - particularly those built on the Prometheus, Loki, and Grafana stack.
- Prior experience in a senior technical role, preferably in a customer-facing capacity, with a demonstrated ability to lead technical teams, drive project success, and product development (e.g., Application, Software Factory Capabilities such as Iron Bank)
- Experience being on-call for platform reliability and the ability to work within a DevSecOps team to monitor, improve and restore operations in a timely manner.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to convey technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
Amazing To Haves
- Experience with Software Supply Chain tooling including SBOM, Sigstore, SLSA, etc.
- Experience with DoD Platform tooling such as PlatformOne (Big Bang, Iron Bank, Party Bus, etc.)
- Experience in working in air gapped environments.
- Experience building, testing, and exercise Backup, Disaster Recovery, and Business Continuity Plans.
- A passion for continuous improvement including processes like retrospectives and post-incident reviews to drive better outcomes in the future.
If you're a seasoned engineer with a passion for building software products and driving customer success through technical innovation and integration, we invite you to join us in this senior-level role. Lead our efforts to empower customers with cutting-edge solutions and drive the growth and success of our product.
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.
Remote - USA
$147,175—$190,000 USD
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 Do
We 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 Serve
Defense 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
Benefits Our Unicorns EnjoyHealth:
- Medical/Dental/Vision
- Premiums are 100% Company Paid
- Health Reimbursement Account
- Life Insurance
- Disability Insurance
Financial:
- 401k Retirement Plan
- Company Stock Options
- Home Office Setup Budget
Leave:
- Unlimited paid time off, with a mandatory 10 days off on top of 11 federal government holidays, week of Thanksgiving, last two weeks of December (including New Year’s Day)
- Paid Parental Leave
Learning:
- 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.
CCPA DISCLOSURE
Top Skills
What We Do
Defense Unicorns specializes in platform technologies that enable rapid and reliable delivery of capabilities across a wide range of mission and technology areas. We support open architecture platforms for secure mission systems that provide optionality for the end user, promote scalability, and allow for continuous identification and integration of new products and services while avoiding vendor lock. Our open approach creates partnership opportunities across the software ecosystem.
Our people are innovators, software engineers, and veterans with decades of experience delivering technology programs across DoD and the broader federal market.
Let's drive change together. Get in touch at [email protected]
