Defense Unicorns
Secure DevSecOps platform for defense
Mission Director - Autonomous and Unmanned Systems
+ Company stock options
Remote within the United States, with travel expected 4–12 times per year.
About the job
- Build and maintain relationships with mission heroes to ensure satisfaction and alignment with their mission outcomes.
- Maintain a minimum 90% revenue retention rate by addressing customer needs, resolving issues promptly, and maintaining high engagement.
- Guide prototype development and adoption towards customers’ operational capability goals.
- Ensure a positive onboarding experience and expedited time-to-value for new customers.
- Promote adoption of Defense Unicorns’ products and solutions to meet and exceed mission objectives.
- Facilitate a retrospective when time-to-value is achieved to capture lessons learned and improve the process for future customers.
- Serve as a trusted advisor, advocating for solutions that meet immediate and long-term goals.
- Maintain a high hero health score by regularly engaging with partners and reinforcing value.
- Provide regular updates to heroes regarding progress on feedback and new features and benefits they are receiving from the products.
- Identify expansion opportunities within current hero accounts and maximize contract value.
- Modify existing contracts to capture new scope when necessary.
- Scope contracts to provide flexibility and allow for expansion, focusing on licenses whenever possible.
- Identify cross-selling opportunities to adjacent programs and partner with the Account Executive.
- Translate data and autonomous and unmanned systems capability gaps into achievable product development milestones.
- Relay customer feedback to the Product team to prioritize relevant features or fixes.
- Advocate for domain-specific enhancements to improve customer experience and retention.
- Track and report key performance indicators, including retention rates, hero health scores, time-to-value, and adoption success.
- Achieve an 80% retention target for domain revenue and maintain a low churn rate.
- Conduct quarterly business reviews to highlight progress and align on future goals.
- Champion customer needs across internal teams to ensure mission success and continued satisfaction.
- Facilitate and socialize the results of a retrospective after time-to-value achievement.
- Balance time-to-value and gross profit margins during the initial contract period, leaning toward time-to-value to support contract stickiness and renewal.
- Maintain gross profit margins above 65% across the domain after initial time-to-value achievement.
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
$171.5M
Headquarters
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Founded
2021
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- DIU selected Defense Unicorns on September 15, 2026 for AMC's OMEN program.
- Lauren Knausenberger joined September 2, 2026, adding Air Force CIO credibility and relationships.
- UDS Fleet launched June 2, 2026, while the company claims a $300 million DOD contract.
What critics are saying
- DittoLive sued Defense Unicorns in July 2026 for trade secret theft in Georgia.
- Revenue depends on Pentagon contracts; a protest or award delay can freeze growth quickly.
- If one flagship program loses accreditation, UDS loses credibility across classified environments.
What makes Defense Unicorns unique
- UDS Fleet ships software to disconnected aircraft and tactical edge systems in minutes.
- Defense Unicorns combines deployment, compliance, and fleet management into one airgap-native stack.
- Its software already supports Air Force, Navy, Army, and 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, 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.
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.
Defense Unicorns, Paramify, partner. Defense Unicorns and Paramify are teaming up to help defense and government organizations move software through secure environments faster by combining software delivery automation with compliance automation. The companies announced a strategic partnership that integrates Paramify's compliance automation platform into Defense Unicorns' Unified Defense Stack (UDS), giving federal customers a more streamlined way to manage security requirements while deploying mission-critical software. For government technology partners, the announcement highlights a growing challenge across federal IT: helping agencies modernize faster while meeting strict security and compliance requirements. Traditionally, compliance processes have required significant manual effort and documentation before new capabilities can be deployed. By automating more of that work, Defense Unicorns and Paramify aim to help organizations maintain security controls while reducing delays that can slow down mission deployments. The partnership initially targets defense and federal use cases, including programs supporting organizations such as the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy. The companies said the combined offering will help customers maintain compliance across complex environments while allowing updates and new capabilities to move more quickly. For solution providers supporting federal customers, the partnership reflects a broader shift in government technology. As agencies push for faster software delivery, partners that can help customers navigate security, compliance and deployment requirements will play an increasingly important role.
The US Navy has selected Defense Unicorns to advance to shipboard deployment phase under a Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic Other Transaction Agreement. The phase transitions from lab-based to at-sea operational evaluations aboard naval vessels and shore facilities. Defense Unicorns previously completed the CANES Next Generation prototype, demonstrating its Unified Defense Stack's ability to rapidly configure hardware and launch software in secure, airgap-native shipboard environments. The company's UDS Enterprise provides a secure platform for deploying software in air-gapped environments, whilst UDS Fleet enables infrastructure management across multiple deployed environments. Defense Unicorns is a veteran-owned defence technology company founded in 2021 by Rob Slaughter, Jeff McCoy, and Andrew Greene. Its technology is used by the US Navy, Army, Air Force, and Space Force.
Defense Unicorns launches UDS Fleet. 0 Comments On June 2, Defense Unicorns, provider of airgap-native software delivery for national security missions, announced the launch of UDS Fleet, a purpose-built product within the Unified Defense Stack (UDS) platform designed to solve one of defense's most persistent challenges: deploying and managing software at scale across distributed systems operating on the front lines. UDS Fleet is built for mission operators managing dispersed fleets of tactical systems in complex, contested environments. By replacing fragmented, manual processes with centralized fleet management, operators gain the clarity and control needed to maintain operational readiness at speed and scale. "The way defense software gets deployed and managed hasn't kept pace with the speed of modern missions. UDS Fleet changes that at the edge. We're giving mission operators a clear, practical path to manage secure software across distributed systems, whether they're in a data center or operating in the most contested environments on the planet. This is about giving the people who defend this nation the tools they need to move fast and win," said Dr. Rob Slaughter, CEO, Defense Unicorns UDS Fleet is part of the broader Unified Defense Stack platform, which also includes UDS Enterprise - designed for platform engineers and cybersecurity teams managing cloud and on-premises data center environments. The two products are designed to work together, with UDS Fleet extending secure software delivery out to the edge as an organization's operational footprint grows. "UDS Fleet reflects our commitment to delivering software that is secure by design, operationally resilient, and built for the realities of modern defense missions. We're replacing complexity with clarity, from the data center to the tactical edge," added Slaughter. Like IC News? Then please consider subscribing. You'll get full access to its searchable library of 10,000+ articles, plus new articles each weekday.