---
title: 'Technical Mission Director (FedD235) at Defense Unicorns'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/technical-mission-director-fedd235-defense-unicorns-springfield-vx7e9gewsb0k'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-07'
---

# Technical Mission Director (FedD235) at Defense Unicorns

- **Company:** Defense Unicorns
- **Location:** Springfield, VA
- **Compensation:** $145k–$185k
- **Posted:** 2026-09-29
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-07
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/defenseunicorns/jobs/5251853007

## Job description

Technical Mission Director

Defense Unicorns | Senior Technical Delivery Leadership

## Role Description

Defense Unicorns is seeking a senior Technical Mission Director to embed with a government team leading a fast-moving, multi-vendor AI and software modernization effort. This role owns day-to-day execution across government stakeholders, engineering teams, and commercial technology partners, creating the structure and tempo needed to move from prototype to operational capability.

The ideal candidate is an Agile delivery leader with strong technical fluency across modern software, cloud, DevSecOps, AI/ML, data, and platform engineering. They must be credible with engineers and senior government leaders, able to run Scrum in a high-tempo environment, and comfortable turning ambiguity into decisions, priorities, and action.

## Responsibilities

- Own day-to-day execution for a multidisciplinary government/industry team and establish the Agile operating rhythm, including Scrum ceremonies, backlog management, sprint planning, reviews, retrospectives, and release planning.
- Coordinate government stakeholders and multiple technology vendors, keeping priorities, dependencies, milestones, and technical risks visible and driving blockers to resolution.
- Lead daily cross-vendor synchronization without allowing meetings to become a substitute for execution; create clear owners, decisions, and next actions.
- Maintain an integrated delivery plan and communicate concise updates on mission outcomes, technical risk, resource needs, decisions, and schedule.
- Work closely with the Technical Solutions Architect and engineering leads across platform, DevSecOps, data, and AI/agentic disciplines to keep execution aligned with the evolving architecture.
- Maintain enough technical depth to recognize integration, security, data, deployment, or architecture issues early and engage the right experts quickly.
- Coordinate the transition from prototype environments into classified operational environments, including readiness, dependencies, and increasing onsite/SCIF collaboration.
- Act as a trusted technical thought partner to government customers: surface risks, frame options, challenge assumptions constructively, and help translate mission needs into executable technical priorities.
- Identify follow-on mission needs, expansion opportunities, and adjacent use cases; understand the customer's acquisition and buying motion and partner with DU growth leadership to shape actionable opportunities.
- Capture lessons learned and repeatable delivery patterns, continuously reducing coordination overhead and improving engineering velocity.
- Build durable customer relationships and represent Defense Unicorns as a technical thought leader rather than simply a delivery resource.

## Minimum Experience and Qualifications

- Active TS/SCI clearance.
- Local to the National Capital Region (NCR) and able to support regular onsite work at a government facility in Springfield, Virginia; available for increasing onsite/SCIF interaction as the effort matures.
- 7+ years leading Agile software, technology, or mission programs, preferably in government or other mission-critical environments.
- Demonstrated hands-on experience with Scrum and Agile delivery, including backlog management, sprint planning, dependency management, retrospectives, and release planning.
- Experience leading cross-functional teams and coordinating multiple concurrent technical workstreams, government stakeholders, and technology vendors.
- Strong technical fluency in modern software delivery, DevSecOps, cloud, Kubernetes, CI/CD, AI/ML, and data platforms.
- Ability to understand technical architecture, dependencies, integration risks, and engineering tradeoffs well enough to drive informed program decisions.
- Exceptional communication, organization, facilitation, and problem-solving skills with the ability to operate effectively in high-tempo, ambiguous environments.

## Preferred Experience and Qualifications

- Experience leading programs involving generative AI, AI agents, data platforms, or enterprise AI ecosystems.
- Experience working across technologies such as OpenShift/OpenShift AI, GitLab, NVIDIA AI, enterprise data platforms, or comparable commercial technologies.
- Familiarity with NIST 800-53, RMF, ATO processes, continuous authorization, and security engineering.
- Experience supporting systems across multiple security classifications or transitioning capabilities into Secret or TS/SCI environments.
- Experience with complex multi-vendor integration efforts where no single provider owns the complete solution.
- Experience advising senior government customers on technology strategy, mission modernization, or platform adoption.
- Experience identifying and shaping follow-on opportunities, expansion paths, or new mission applications within an existing customer.
- CSM, PSM, SAFe, PMI-ACP, PMP, or comparable Agile/program certification.

Travel / Onsite Expectations

This position is NCR-local and requires regular onsite support at the government team's Springfield campus. Some hybrid flexibility, but regular onsite/SCIF engagement is expected. 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 $145,000—$185,000 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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