Forward-Deployed C-UAS Systems Engineer

Defense Unicorns; United States; Remote; USD 149,000 - 201,000; Full time

Job summary

Defense Unicorns is seeking a forward-deployed data/engineering leader to deploy, harden, integrate, and operate a modular C-UAS data capability within DoD environments. You’ll lead end-to-end data pipelines, manage cross-domain data movement, and ensure accreditation artifacts are generated for IL4/IL5 settings.

You’ll collaborate with mission operators and engineers, guide junior engineers, and help scale the forward-deployed team while traveling 10–25% as required.

Qualifications

• Experience in tactical edge and interoperable mission environments.
• Production data platforms including lakehouse tech and object storage.
• Experience with streaming and data integration technologies.
• Hands-on production data pipelines with orchestration tools.
• Knowledge of data governance, access control, and auditability.
• Strong SQL and data modeling for analytical workloads.
• Production Kubernetes experience and DoD environment familiarity.
• Experience with DoD STIG/cATO and accreditation processes is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Deploy and harden UDS Data Capability in the mission hero's environment.
• Own integration with existing mission systems and sensor arrays.
• Build pipelines moving data across classification boundaries.
• Operate deployments including capacity, backups, observability, and incident response.
• Generate accreditation artifacts and support IL4/IL5 requirements.
• Represent users to product and engineering; document issues and improvements.
• Train teams with runbooks and knowledge-transfer materials.
• Mentor junior Data Engineer FDEs on complex problems.

Skills

TAK Server

ATAK/WinTAK

SQL

Kubernetes

Tools

Iceberg

Delta Lake

Hudi

Ceph

PostgreSQL

Trino

Kafka

Strimzi/Kafka

Airflow

Job description

Defense Unicorns is seeking a forward-deployed data/engineering leader to deploy, harden, integrate, and operate a modular C-UAS data capability within DoD environments. You’ll lead end-to-end data pipelines, manage cross-domain data movement, and ensure accreditation artifacts are generated for IL4/IL5 settings.

You’ll collaborate with mission operators and engineers, guide junior engineers, and help scale the forward-deployed team while traveling 10–25% as required.