Hackathons - Team Lead (FedD068)

Defense Unicorns; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 149,000 - 201,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits (company-paid)

Home office budget

401k plan with company stock options

Job summary

Defense Unicorns seeks a Team Lead to serve as the technical backbone for its hackathon program, setting architecture, integration patterns, and guardrails for events. You will work with partners, government stakeholders, and internal teams to design, plan, and execute large-scale, community-facing hackathons throughout the year.

You will evaluate and integrate partner technologies into durable reference architectures compatible with secure, air-gapped environments, while communicating mission

Qualifications

• Strong hands-on technical background designing and building software systems in multi-technology environments.
• Hands-on experience with UDS or similar platform abstraction and deployment frameworks.
• Experience engaging directly with government or defense stakeholders in a technical capacity.
• Comfort with presales or customer-facing roles blending technical credibility with value communication.
• Understanding of software delivery and platform engineering practices for air-gapped environments.

Responsibilities

• Technical Direction and Architecture: set overall hackathon direction, reference architectures, and guardrails.
• Stakeholder Engagement: act as technical voice with government and industry partners; translate capabilities for audiences.
• Hackathon Execution: design and deliver technical programming, workshops, and participant enablement.
• Capture outcomes and ensure documentation supports continuity and reuse.

Skills

Hands-on tech

UDS platform

Gov/defense engagement

Presales/customer-facing

Software delivery/PL engineering

Job description

As a Team Lead at Defense Unicorns, you will serve as the technical backbone of our hackathon program: setting the architecture, integration patterns, and technical guardrails every event runs on. You'll work across the team to design, plan, and execute large-scale, community-facing hackathon events throughout the year, moving fluidly between technical strategy and energizing a room full of mission heroes, operators, and builders.

You’ll evaluate and integrate the right mix of partner technologies (cloud providers, Defense Unicorns' own platform and tooling, and the broader defense vendor ecosystem) into a durable reference architecture that works within controlled environments. You’ll serve as a credible technical voice with government stakeholders and industry partners, ensuring every hackathon is built on a foundation that sets participants up to succeed and produces outcomes that can transition to production.

Responsibilities

Technical Direction and Architecture

• Set and own the overall technical direction for each hackathon, ensuring solutions are grounded in UDS and Defense Unicorns' platform and tooling philosophy
• Evaluate and integrate partner technologies and third-party tools to ensure broad compatibility across the diverse technology stacks participants bring
• Define technical guardrails, reference architectures, and integration patterns that guide participant teams toward durable, deployable outcomes
• Identify technical risks early and develop mitigation strategies in partnership with the Mission Manager

Stakeholder Engagement

• Serve as a technical voice in external engagements with government mission heroes, industry partners, and hackathon participants
• Translate complex technical capabilities into compelling narratives that communicate mission impact and drive stakeholder buy-in
• Build enthusiasm and credibility with a wide range of audiences, from senior government decision-makers to individual contributors on participant teams
• Support the Mission Manager in cultivating and sustaining relationships across the DoW innovation ecosystem

Hackathon Execution

• Partner closely with our team, our partners, and the Mission Heroes throughout the full event lifecycle, from planning through post-event follow-up
• Design and deliver technical programming, workshops, and participant enablement content that set teams up for success
• Capture technical outcomes and ensure post-event documentation supports continuity and reuse

Required Qualifications:

• Strong hands-on technical background, with demonstrated experience designing and building software systems in complex, multi-technology environments
• Hands-on experience with UDS or similar platform abstraction and deployment frameworks
• Experience engaging directly with government or defense stakeholders in a technical capacity, including translating technical concepts for non-technical audiences
• Comfort with presales or customer-facing roles that blend technical credibility with the ability to generate excitement and communicate value
• Demonstrated understanding of software delivery and platform engineering practices for air-gapped environments, including offline package management, artifact distribution, and secure update mechanisms.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Familiarity with the DoW innovation ecosystem, including programs, procurement, and mission priorities
• Experience supporting or participating in hackathons, integration events, or innovation sprints in a technical leadership capacity
• Ability to operate in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and build structure where none exists
• Track record of delivering technical solutions that outlast the event or sprint that created them

Travel

Travel is expected multiple times per year to support event execution and stakeholder engagement, primarily within the continental United States, but occasionally OCONUS as required.

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.

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

$148,750 - $201,250 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

• Cloud Environments (AWS/GCP and Azure)
• Continuous Delivery and automation tooling
• GitOps
• Containers
• CNCF projects and open source products and packages
• Building and improving security delivery
• Building Kubernetes and cloud native applications

Benefits Our Unicorns Enjoy

Health:

• Premiums are 100% Company Paid
• Health Savings Account
• Life Insurance
• Disability Insurance
• 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

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.

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Enter manually

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

LinkedIn Profile

GitHub

Website

U.S. Standard Demographic Questions

We invite applicants to share their demographic background. If you choose to complete this survey, your responses may be used to identify areas of improvement in our hiring process.

How would you describe your gender identity? (mark all that apply) Select...

How would you describe your racial/ethnic background? (mark all that apply) Select...

How would you describe your sexual orientation? (mark all that apply) Select...

Do you identify as transgender? (select one) Select...

Do you have a disability or chronic condition (physical, visual, auditory, cognitive, mental, emotional, or other) that substantially limits one or more of your major life activities, including mobility, communication (seeing, hearing, speaking), and learning? (select one) Select...

Are you a veteran or active member of the United States Armed Forces? (select one) Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey.Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiringprocess or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in aconfidential file.

As set forth in Defense Unicorns’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection.As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measurethe effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categoriesis as follows:

A \"disabled veteran\" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service‑connected disability.

A \"recently separated veteran\" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An \"active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran\" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An \"Armed forces service medal veteran\" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305

Page 1 of 1

OMB Control Number 1250-0005

Expires 04/30/2026

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp .

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

• Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
• Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
• Blind or low vision
• Cancer (past or present)
• Cardiovascular or heart disease
• Celiac disease
• Cerebral palsy
• Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
• Diabetes
• Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
• Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
• Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
• Intellectual or developmental disability
• Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
• Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
• Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
• Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
• Neurodivergence, for example, attention‑deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
• Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
• Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
• Short stature (dwarfism)
• Traumatic brain injury

Disability Status Select...

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.