Summary

Defense Unicorns is hiring a Mission Manager to join their Management team. The Technical Mission Manager works closely with Army customers, engineering teams, and senior mission leaders to ensure successful delivery of secure software and platform capabilities. Key skills: AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, Terraform.

EMPLOYER IS A CONTRACTOR FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. THIS POSITION WILL REQUIRE U.S. CITIZENSHIP AND ACTIVE SECRET CLEARANCE.

Role Description:

This role works within Defense Unicorns' Army Domain and serves as a mission-focused technical contributor responsible for supporting customer success, delivery execution, and adoption of Defense Unicorns solutions across Army mission portfolios.

The Technical Mission Manager works closely with Army customers, engineering teams, and senior mission leaders to ensure successful delivery of secure software and platform capabilities. This individual helps translate mission requirements into actionable work, supports execution across cross-functional teams, and develops into a trusted technical advisor to customers throughout the delivery lifecycle.

This role is ideal for individuals with operational military experience, technical solution delivery experience, or customer-facing engineering backgrounds who are looking to build a foundation in mission management and grow into broader program leadership responsibilities.

Key Responsibilities:

Develop a strong understanding of Defense Unicorns products and capabilities, including UDS, Fleet, Zarf, and supporting platform technologies
Translate customer requirements, mission needs, and operational challenges into actionable work items and delivery plans
Coordinate execution across engineering teams to support successful delivery of customer outcomes
Support backlog management, sprint planning, prioritization, and delivery tracking activities
Work directly with Army stakeholders to understand mission objectives, gather requirements, and communicate progress
Effectively communicate technical concepts and solution capabilities to both technical and non-technical audiences
Support demonstrations, technical workshops, and customer engagements alongside senior team members
Monitor delivery risks, dependencies, and issues while helping coordinate mitigation plans
Assist in translating customer feedback into backlog items and delivery updates
Build foundational knowledge of Army mission environments, contract structures, and DU solution architecture
Contribute to team documentation, delivery tracking, and internal reporting

Required Qualifications:

Hands-on experience with Kubernetes in production environments (Azure AKS, AWS EKS, or on-prem distributions such as RKE2, K3s, or OpenShift)
Experience with Helm for packaging and deploying containerized applications
Working knowledge of GitOps workflows and Infrastructure-as-Code tools (Terraform, OpenTofu)
Familiarity with hybrid cloud architectures, including networking, RBAC, and storage for cloud and on-prem clusters
Understanding of DevSecOps/DevOps principles and CI/CD pipelines (GitLab or GitHub)
Experience working with or supporting the U.S. Army, Army Software Factory, or similar DoD software organizations
Strong communication skills and effectiveness in a fully remote team environment
Self-motivated and able to work independently with minimal supervision
Willingness to travel as needed for on-site training and support

Preferred Qualifications:

Experience with system image creation, architecture design, and deployment pipelines
Experience with Zarf, UDS, or similar air-gapped deployment tooling
Comfortable serving as a primary customer-facing technical resource, including production support and platform guidance
DoD IAT Level II certification (such as Security+)

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.

Remote - USA

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.

$97,750 - $132,250 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.

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