Senior to Staff Software Engineer

About the role

Role Description:

Defense Unicorns is seeking a Senior to Staff Software Engineer to help drive our transformation from legacy, on-premises software to a modern, cloud-native platform. In this role you will play a key part in designing and building our next-generation, cloud native maintenance planning and execution tool. You'll be joining Defense Unicorns’ US Navy team and be responsible for creating and owning end-to-end project delivery, working with stakeholders across multiple vendors, platform engineering teams, and government organizations. You will work closely with the government project lead and be responsible for shaping the technical requirements of this effort, driving the project from development, user acceptance testing, production transition, and sustainment.

Responsibilities:

Partner with software engineers, data architects, platform engineers, and a wide variety of stakeholders to translate ambiguous product requirements into technical solutions

Create optimized transformations to clean, enrich, and model data, utilizing cloud-native tools

Ensure data quality, integrity, and compliance, maintaining metadata and lineage

Help refactor and modernize existing on-prem systems into distributed, cloud-based services

Contribute to the design of authentication, identity management, and RBAC/ABAC frameworks

Participate in architectural discussions, code reviews, and ongoing technical improvements

Drive best practices in microservice design, testing, observability, and CI/CD automation

Collaborate closely with partner company engineers and stakeholders to devise the best solutions for our Mission Heroes

Collaborate with the Defense Unicorns product team sharing improvements and growth opportunities for future projects

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

Communicate effectively with all levels of engineers and stakeholders internal and external to the company

Influence product direction through deep understanding of user needs and system constraints

Travel Expectations/Requirements: 15-20%

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:

7+ years (senior) or 10+ years (staff) experience with software engineering

Experience building a software tool with core focuses on software lifecycle and management

Expert level proficiency in at least one modern programming language (e.g., Go, TypeScript, Python) with the ability to write idiomatic, testable code

Strong understanding of system design, API development, workflow orchestration (Argo Workflows preferred), relational databases, and cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure)

Deep knowledge of database design, schema design, indexing, and query optimization

Past experience leading a team through the decomposition of a complex monolithic application design into small, independent services that communicate with lightweight APIs

Modern API design experience, beyond basic CRUD operations; use of RESTful services, and high confidence utilizing tools such as FastAPI in Python, ASP.NET in C#, or equivalent

Experience with implementation of authorization and data governance, security telemetry pipelines, policy enforcement, and role-based access control to ensure compliance and data privacy across enterprise systems

Excited to assess intricate problems, propose solutions, and implement them effectively

Familiar with Core Kubernetes Concepts including but not limited to Controllers, Operators, and CRDs

Passion for clean architecture, automation, and iterative modernization

Familiar with Department of Defense acquisition or sustainment software modernization projects

Strong communication and collaboration skills, comfortable conveying technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences as well as leading technical working sessions with partners and mission heroes

Analytical, problem-solving mindset with a high attention to detail

Experience working proactively, managing time efficiently, and thriving in a vibrant remote work environment! ✨🦄

Who We Are

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 Enjoy

Health:

Medical/Dental/Vision

Premiums are 100% Company Paid

Health Savings Account

Life Insurance

Disability Insurance

Financial:

401k Retirement Plan

Company Stock Options

Home Office Budget

Leave:

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

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.

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