Senior Platform Engineer
About the job
- Significant experience deploying and maintaining production applications in Kubernetes.
- Experience with Docker, container registries, and container-image lifecycle management.
- Experience building or maintaining continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines using GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or comparable tools.
- Experience deploying and operating workloads in Amazon Web Services 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/Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance.
- Own and improve end-to-end release workflows for the team’s artificial intelligence 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 continuous integration and continuous delivery 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 artificial intelligence and graphics processing unit-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.
- Communicate technical decisions, risks, and tradeoffs to technical and nontechnical partners.
- Help diagnose and resolve high-impact production issues affecting mission users.
- Experience with Zarf.
- Experience deploying artificial intelligence, machine-learning, or graphics processing unit-enabled applications.
- Familiarity with graphics processing unit 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, application programming interface security, or cloud security.
- Experience supporting a production system operating under a Department of Defense Authority to Operate.
- Current Department of Defense 8570 IAT II certification.
- Experience working in an Agile, remote engineering environment.
About the company
Defense Unicorns provides secure, open-source DevSecOps solutions and related services for defense and federal customers. Its platform is designed to be infrastructure-agnostic, integrating development, security, and operations to deliver software quickly while meeting strict federal security and accreditation standards. The company differentiates itself by focusing on mission-driven government and defense programs, leveraging open-source tooling, and offering training and consulting to help organizations upskill, transform digitally, and navigate DoD SBIR/STTR programs. The goal is to help government agencies and defense contractors deliver secure software at speed, acquire and integrate software solutions efficiently, and achieve compliance in complex procurement environments.
Company Size
201-500
Company Stage
Series B
Total Funding
$172.3M
Headquarters
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Founded
2021
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- On September 24, 2026, Army awarded Defense Unicorns a potential $350 million IDIQ.
- On September 15, 2026, DIU selected Defense Unicorns for AMC's OMEN program.
- Lauren Knausenberger's 2026 hiring and Paramify's July 29 partnership accelerate federal sales.
What critics are saying
- The September 24, 2026 Army award received one bid, exposing weak competitive depth.
- Task orders fund work order-by-order through 2031, so revenue depends on procurement timing.
- If DIU prototypes stall before production, incumbents can absorb the mission software stack.
What makes Defense Unicorns unique
- Defense Unicorns builds airgap-native, open-source software delivery for disconnected warfighting environments.
- UDS Fleet and UDS Enterprise give one control plane across cloud, on-prem, edge.
- By September 2026, its software ran across Navy, Army, Air Force, Space Force systems.
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Benefits
Health Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
Life Insurance
Disability Insurance
401(k) Retirement Plan
401(k) Company Match
Unlimited Paid Time Off
Paid Parental Leave
Home Office Stipend
Conference Attendance Budget
Professional Development Budget
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↓ -6%1 year growth
↓ -6%2 year growth
↓ -8%Defense Unicorns has secured a $350 million single-award contract from the US Department of Defense to accelerate software delivery across the department. The Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract, awarded by Army Contracting Command Aberdeen Proving Ground, allows any DoD organisation to directly access Defense Unicorns' software products, including Unified Defense Stack Enterprise and UDS Fleet. The single-award structure enables ordering activities to issue task orders without running new competitions for each requirement, streamlining the procurement process. UDS Enterprise provides hardened runtime and cyber services for secure software operation across cloud, on-premises, and tactical edge environments, whilst UDS Fleet offers a control plane for managing software across distributed environments. Defense Unicorns, founded in 2021, currently serves the US Navy, Air Force, and Space Force, with software deployed across over 100 mission systems.
Defense Unicorns secures $350M Army software delivery contract. * Defense Unicorns has secured an IDIQ contract to enhance software delivery for the Army * The contract has an estimated completion date of Sept. 23, 2031 * Defense Unicorns previously worked with the Army C5ISR Center on UDS Army The U.S. Army has awarded Defense Unicorns a $350 million contract to provide an open-source software delivery capability for the Department of War, Army Enterprise and other national security environments. What are the contract details? The War Department said Friday the firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract was awarded Sept. 24 and is expected to run through Sept. 23, 2031. Individual orders will determine where work will be performed and what funding will be provided. The Army solicited bids online and received one offer for the contract. Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is overseeing the award. What is Defense Unicorns? Defense Unicorns is a service-disabled, veteran-owned defense technology company that builds open-source, airgap-native technologies to develop, deliver and sustain mission software. The company raised $136 million in a Series B funding round in January, pushing its valuation past $1 billion. In May 2025, Defense Unicorns announced that it had achieved Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification Level 2, which allows it to manage controlled unclassified information. What Army work has Defense Unicorns done before? The award comes after Defense Unicorns announced UDS Army, an offering it developed with the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's C5ISR Center, in February. UDS Army supports commercial applications for Army missions and uses authorized cloud environments at Impact Levels 4 and 5. UDS Army also includes an application marketplace, sandbox environments and software packages designed for cloud, on-premises and tactical edge settings. According to the company, the offering is meant to help small and mid-sized software companies succeed in the national security ecosystem and give Army program managers a way to acquire, test and deploy applications. Defense Unicorns said UDS Army can cut the time needed to earn an authorization to operate from 18 months to as little as two weeks.
Defense Unicorns, a veteran-owned defence technology company, has been selected by the Defense Innovation Unit to support the Open Mission Engine (OMEN) programme for Air Mobility Command. The company will deliver UDS Fleet, a system designed to help commanders deploy, update, monitor, and sustain mission software in contested and disconnected environments. UDS Fleet provides system administration, fleet management, and cybersecurity capabilities built for airgapped and tactical edge environments. The solution enables mission applications to be deployed without network connectivity and restored to operational baseline in minutes. Component software in UDS Fleet has flown on the F-22, F-16, C-17, and a Navy Category 2 UAS, and is deployed across multiple classification levels within the Department of War.
DIU selects Defense Unicorns to accelerate Air Mobility Command OMEN efforts. Defense Unicorns UDS Fleet will help commanders and aircrews deploy, update, monitor, and sustain mission software across contested, disconnected, and operationally constrained environments. [SAN ANTONIO, TX] September 15, 2026 - Defense Unicorns, a veteran-owned defense technology company, today announced its selection to support the Defense Innovation Unit's Open Mission Engine (OMEN) program for Air Mobility Command (AMC). Defense Unicorns will deliver UDS Fleet as an enabling capability to extend the operational utility, deployment, interoperability, management, and sustainment of OMEN and related mission services across the AMC fleet. The effort, resourced by the OUSW(A&S) Operational Energy Prototyping Fund, is designed to turn near-real-time fuel and mobility data into actionable information for commanders and accelerate the transition from prototype to enduring fielded capability. "Every software delay has a mission cost, and in contested environments that cost can show up in airmen and American lives. UDS Fleet ensures that when operations need a critical software update they can get it securely and on-demand, when the mission matters most. At Defense Unicorns, we build the software the Department of War relies on, when the stakes are the highest, and when operations must survive contact with peer conflict. We're moving Department of War continuous software updates from diagrams on a PPT slide into real mission capabilities," said Dr. Rob Slaughter, CEO of Defense Unicorns. UDS Fleet provides Denied, Degraded, Intermittent, and Limited (DDIL)-resilient system administration, orchestration, fleet management, software distribution, and cybersecurity capabilities purpose-built for airgapped and tactical edge environments. The solution enables mission applications to be packaged as immutable, self-contained artifacts; deployed without network connectivity; restored to a known-good operational baseline in minutes; and managed through operator-accessible web, tablet, and mobile interfaces. For OMEN, Defense Unicorns will enhance UDS Fleet with features designed to give commanders and program offices visibility into deployed software, system health, configuration state, and operational availability across distributed aircraft without dependence on continuous reachback. These enhancements will help AMC and its supporting program offices keep their aircraft mission ready in an era of increased cyber threats. By replacing manual, error-prone sustainment processes with a repeatable, software-defined approach, UDS Fleet helps OMEN move from an open mission systems connectivity framework to an operational capability that directly supports aircrew decision-making in flight. The platform is designed to keep mission systems available, secure, and effective through outages, cyber events, loss of connectivity, and other operational disruptions. Component software in UDS Fleet has flown on the F-22, F-16, C-17, and a Navy Category 2 UAS, and is deployed across multiple classification levels within the Department of War. Defense Unicorns has also demonstrated rapid deployment and sustainment of mission software through programs including Project Viper, Project Fox, ATOMS, and AFLCMC/WA. Other companies selected for the OMEN award include Stator Integration Labs, which will deliver advanced data fusion and spatio-temporal reasoning capabilities that help OMEN turn mission data into operational insight, and Air Space Intelligence (ASI), which will provide a Common Operating Picture to support planning, situational awareness, and decision-making in contested environments. Together, these capabilities are intended to transform fuel and mobility data into decision advantage for commanders operating in contested logistics environments. "OMEN represents exactly the kind of problem we set out to solve when we founded Defense Unicorns: getting mission software into the hands of warfighters faster than the threats they are facing. We are thrilled to help provide the platform foundation that will keep this capability deployable, updatable, and resilient across the fleet," said Jeff McCoy, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Defense Unicorns. About Defense Unicorns Defense Unicorns is a veteran-owned defense technology company founded in 2021 by Rob Slaughter, Jeff McCoy, and Andrew Greene to make software a strategic deterrent for the U.S. Department of War. The company builds open-source, airgap-native technologies that enable the secure development, delivery, and sustainment of mission software across cloud, on-premises, airgapped, and tactical edge environments. Defense Unicorns' technology is trusted by operators of critical systems across the U.S. Navy, Army, Air Force, and Space Force. Learn more at https://defenseunicorns.com.
Defense Unicorns has appointed Lauren Knausenberger as chief business officer. Knausenberger brings decades of experience in technology advancement, digital transformation, and cybersecurity across government and defence environments. She will drive the company's growth strategy, strengthen strategic partnerships, and expand its impact across the defence ecosystem. Most recently, she served as executive vice president and chief innovation officer at SAIC, where she led strategy and AI-enabled transformation. Previously, Knausenberger was chief information officer of the Department of the Air Force, overseeing a technology portfolio valued at approximately $17 billion. She supported around 20,000 cyber operations personnel globally. Defense Unicorns, founded in 2021, builds airgap-native technologies for secure software delivery across defence environments.