---
title: 'Senior Software Engineer - Virtual Machines (RD222) at Defense Unicorns'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-virtual-machines-rd222-defense-unicorns-united-states-3778w0wjnykp'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-31'
---

# Senior Software Engineer - Virtual Machines (RD222) at Defense Unicorns

- **Company:** Defense Unicorns
- **Location:** United States
- **Compensation:** $149k–$201k
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-10-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-31
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/defenseunicorns/jobs/5272498007

## Job description

EMPLOYER IS A CONTRACTOR FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. THIS POSITION REQUIRES U.S. CITIZENSHIP.

Role Description:

Defense Unicorns is building UDS VM, a new product that enables Mission Heroes to securely deploy, operate, and manage virtual machines alongside containerized workloads within the UDS platform.

Many mission-critical applications cannot easily move to containers because of operating system dependencies, vendor requirements, or existing approvals. Today, running these workloads on UDS often requires custom engineering. We’re building a supported, repeatable path for running VMs in secure, disconnected environments, with the security controls and evidence needed for authorization.

The work sits at the intersection of product software engineering, Kubernetes, virtualization, and security. We’re building software—not simply operating infrastructure—to make virtual machines first-class workloads within the UDS ecosystem.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll shape technical decisions, independently own complex product capabilities, and collaborate across engineering, product, and UX to deliver reliable, intuitive solutions. As this new team grows, you’ll help establish strong engineering practices; one of our Senior openings also offers an opportunity to provide hands-on technical leadership.

What You’ll Work On:

- Building Kubernetes tooling and APIs for orchestrating and managing virtual machine workloads
- Building tooling to inspect, convert, prepare, and package VM images for disconnected delivery
- Integrating virtual machine workloads with UDS networking, observability, and security capabilities
- Creating VM management workflows for inventory, status, power controls, and console access
- Solving problems across VM lifecycle, persistent storage, networking, and image distribution
- Making VM deployments reproducible, secure, and supportable in air-gapped environments
- Working with Product, UX, and Mission Heroes to turn operational needs into useful product capabilities

Responsibilities:

- Own the design, implementation, testing, and delivery of complex software features and systems
- Drive pragmatic technical decisions and contribute to architecture across product components
- Proactively identify and resolve ambiguity in collaboration with Product, UX, and Mission Heroes
- Debug complex issues across Kubernetes, virtualization, storage, networking, and operating systems
- Improve the reliability, security, performance, observability, and maintainability of our software
- Review code, mentor teammates, and help establish strong engineering practices
- Document technical decisions, communicate clearly, and collaborate effectively across teams

Travel Expectations/Requirements: 5-10%

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 of professional software engineering experience
- Strong proficiency in Go or another modern programming language, with an interest in developing Go-based systems
- Experience designing and building software that interacts with Kubernetes or other distributed systems
- Strong understanding of APIs, system design, and software architecture
- Experience developing backend services, controllers, operators, or developer tooling
- Familiarity with Linux systems, containers, and operating system concepts
- Experience building, testing, and operating production software
- Ability to navigate ambiguity, evaluate technical tradeoffs, and independently drive complex work to completion
- Strong problem-solving skills and ability to debug across multiple system boundaries
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills, including the ability to influence technical direction and mentor other engineers

Great to Have:

- Experience with KubeVirt, QEMU/KVM, or other virtualization technologies
- Experience developing Kubernetes operators, controllers, or custom resource definitions (CRDs)
- Experience configuring, managing, or troubleshooting Windows virtual machines
- Familiarity with VM image formats, conversion, migration, and lifecycle management
- Experience with Kubernetes networking and storage
- Experience building CLI tools, particularly in Go
- Familiarity with Zarf, OCI artifacts, or software packaging and distribution
- Experience working in air-gapped, disconnected, or regulated environments
- Contributions to Kubernetes, KubeVirt, or other CNCF open-source projects
- Experience building security-focused software or integrating systems with identity, access control, and observability platforms

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. [LinkedIn - Defense Unicorns](https://www.linkedin.com/company/defense-unicorns)

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