--- title: 'Senior Platform Engineer at Defense Unicorns' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-platform-engineer-defense-unicorns-united-states-95b93ka40mpx' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-17' --- # Senior Platform Engineer at Defense Unicorns - **Company:** Defense Unicorns - **Location:** United States - **Compensation:** $149k–$201k - **Work type:** remote - **Posted:** 2026-09-22 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-17 - **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/defenseunicorns/jobs/5167588007 ## Job description EMPLOYER IS A CONTRACTOR FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. THIS POSITION REQUIRES U.S. CITIZENSHIP. Role Description: We are seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to join a team developing AI applications that help users understand and act on complex Naval engineering records. Using a Forward Deployed Engineering model, our team works closely with mission users to understand how they work, identify friction in their daily tasks, and deliver functional improvements based on rapid feedback. You will serve as the team’s primary platform engineering owner, responsible for the systems and processes that move our applications from source code into secure, production-ready environments. Your work will span release workflows, CI/CD pipelines, container images, Kubernetes configurations, cloud infrastructure, application deployments, and production troubleshooting. This is a hands-on senior individual contributor role. You will independently own significant platform work, make technical decisions across systems, anticipate risks and dependencies, and collaborate with application engineers and platform teams across the company. Responsibilities: In this position, you will: - Own and improve end-to-end release workflows for the team’s AI applications, from building container images through creating production-ready release packages. - Build and publish container images, address or document vulnerabilities, manage dependency updates, and maintain release artifacts. - Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, GitHub runners, and GitLab workflows. - Configure, deploy, scale, and maintain production applications running in Kubernetes. - Maintain Zarf packages, Kubernetes configurations, and other declarative deployment artifacts. - Support the deployment and troubleshooting of AI and GPU-enabled workloads. - Investigate data-ingestion and production issues across application code, infrastructure, system access, and deployment configuration. - Partner with application engineers and platform teams to plan deployments, resolve technical issues, and improve delivery practices. - Identify opportunities to make releases and deployments more secure, reliable, repeatable, and observable. - Clearly communicate technical decisions, risks, and tradeoffs to both technical and nontechnical partners. - Help diagnose and resolve high-impact production issues affecting mission users. Travel Expectations: Occasional travel is expected, typically including at least one customer onsite and one to two company events per year. Engineers may have additional opportunities to participate in customer visits and observe users working in their operational environment. 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. Required Experience and Qualifications - Significant experience deploying and maintaining production applications in Kubernetes. - Experience with Docker, container registries, and container-image lifecycle management. - Experience building or maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or comparable tools. - Experience deploying and operating workloads in AWS or comparable cloud environments. - Proficiency in Python and familiarity with shell scripting. - Experience troubleshooting problems across application code, infrastructure, networking, access, and deployment configuration. - Familiarity with vulnerability remediation, dependency management, and container-security practices. - Ability to independently own complex technical work, navigate ambiguity, and make sound decisions without requiring a fully prescribed solution. - Ability to anticipate technical risks and dependencies and communicate them effectively. - Strong collaboration skills and experience working across engineering teams. - Eligibility to apply for a security clearance or an active Top Secret/SCI security clearance. ## Preferred Experience and Qualifications - Experience with Zarf. - Experience deploying AI, machine-learning, or GPU-enabled applications. - Familiarity with GPU scheduling, allocation, and troubleshooting in Kubernetes, including NVIDIA GPU Operator or related components. - Familiarity with Chainguard images. - Experience with declarative deployments and infrastructure as code. - Experience supporting data-ingestion workflows. - Experience with security automation, container security, API security, or cloud security. - Experience supporting a production system operating under a Department of Defense Authority to Operate. - Current DoD 8570 IAT II certification. - Experience working in an Agile, remote engineering environment. 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 $148,750—$201,250 USD ## 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. [CCPA DISCLOSURE](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DzT00w2uadYw9TfdorHuEsvPccZvn_g4/view?usp=drive_link) ## About Defense Unicorns ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Defense Unicorns delivers secure, scalable, and vendor-lock-free software deployment solutions for mission-critical, air-gapped, and classified environments, primarily for the U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence community. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series B) - **Headquarters**: Colorado, United States - **Founded**: 2021 - **Founders**: Rob Slaughter (CEO), Jeff McCoy (CTO), Andrew Greene (Co-founder) ## Core Business - Primary industry/industries: Defense technology, software development, national security, cloud-native infrastructure - Target customers: U.S. Department of Defense agencies, system integrators, and mission teams operating in air-gapped, classified, or highly secure environments - Mission or purpose statement: "Advance freedom globally by transforming how the U.S. defense and intelligence community buys, builds, delivers, and sustains mission capabilities." ## Products & Services - **[UDS (Unicorn Delivery Service)]**: An open-source, platform-agnostic software delivery platform that enables the packaging, deployment, and management of modern cloud-native applications into air-gapped, edge, and classified environments. It automates security compliance, vulnerability scanning, and continuous ATO (cATO) workflows. - **[Zarf]**: An open-source, air-gap-native software delivery tool that was the company’s first product, designed to simplify deploying containerized applications in disconnected environments. - **Professional Services & Mission Support**: Custom engineering, platform integration, and mission-specific deployment support for DoD agencies and system integrators. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: $1 Billion+ (achieved unicorn status in January 2026) - **Key Metric**: Total Funding of $171.5M across two rounds - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Bain Capital (led Series B of $136M in January 2026), Ansa Capital and Sapphire Ventures (co-led $35M Series A in February 2024) - **Growth Signals**: Headcount of 150+ employees (35.9% YoY growth), 35,000+ LinkedIn followers (42.4% yearly growth), 34 active job postings, and a growing list of DoD and intelligence community clients. ## Competitive Advantages - **Deep domain expertise**: Founded by veterans of Kessel Run and Platform One, the team has firsthand experience building and deploying software within the DoD, giving them unique credibility and insight. - **Open-source, vendor-lock-free philosophy**: Their products (UDS, Zarf) are open-source, ensuring no proprietary vendor lock-in, which is a critical requirement for national security systems. - **Air-gap specialization**: Their core technology is purpose-built for the most challenging deployment environments (disconnected, classified, edge), a niche that few commercial software companies can serve. - **Continuous ATO integration**: Security and compliance are built directly into the software delivery pipeline, dramatically reducing the time to get new capabilities into the hands of warfighters. ## Strategic Focus - **Scaling the platform**: With the $136M Series B, the company is aggressively investing in product development, engineering, and go-to-market teams to expand UDS capabilities and customer reach. - **Expanding mission delivery**: Hiring across multiple "Mission Manager" and "Account Executive" roles focused on specific military branches (Air Force, Army, Navy, Space, USSOCOM), indicating deep vertical integration into each service branch. - **Open-source ecosystem growth**: Continuing to build and nurture the open-source community around UDS and Zarf to drive adoption and create partnership opportunities across the defense software ecosystem. ## Why Work Here - **Mission-driven culture**: The company operates with a single belief: "a value not lived is not a value at all." Core values include "We Take Extreme Ownership," "We Innovate to Impact," and "We Are MISSION Driven." - **Remote-first environment**: Most roles are fully remote from anywhere in the United States, with support for home office setup. Onsite requirements are clearly noted when needed for mission support. - **Comprehensive benefits**: 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees (shared cost for dependents), company equity options, 401k, life and disability insurance, and generous paid parental leave. - **Generous time off**: Flexible Time Off (FTO) plus all Federal Holidays, one week for Thanksgiving, and two weeks for Christmas and New Year’s. - **Career growth**: Financial support for training, conferences, and professional subscriptions. - **SkillBridge program**: Authorized DoD SkillBridge provider, offering internships and apprenticeships for service members transitioning to civilian careers. - **Engineering-driven**: "Engineer Driven" is a core identity, with a strong emphasis on solving hard technical problems for national security. ## Sources 1. [defenseunicorns.com - About Us](https://defenseunicorns.com/company/) 2. [defenseunicorns.com - The Airgap Software Company](https://defenseunicorns.com/) 3. [defenseunicorns.com - Careers](https://defenseunicorns.com/careers/) 4. [Greenhouse - Jobs at Defense Unicorns](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/defenseunicorns) 5. 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