Senior Software Engineer

Defense Unicorns; Colorado Springs (CO); Remote; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Company stock options

Home office budget

Flexible time off

Job summary

Defense Unicorns seeks a Senior to Staff Software Engineer to drive a cloud-native transformation of legacy systems for a maintenance planning tool. You will own end-to-end delivery, mentor engineers, and collaborate with government partners and vendors.

You will design scalable architectures, implement secure APIs, and modernize platforms with CI/CD, observability, and governance across distributed services. This role is remote-friendly with travel expectations.

Qualifications

• 7+ years (senior) or 10+ years (staff) software engineering experience.
• Experience building a software tool focused on software lifecycle and management.
• Expert in at least one modern language (Go, TypeScript, Python) with testable code.
• Strong system design, API development, and cloud platform knowledge.
• Experience decomposing monoliths into microservices and building secure, distributed services.
• Modern API design beyond CRUD; familiarity with REST and tools like FastAPI/ASP.NET.
• Authorization, data governance, security telemetry pipelines, and RBAC/ABAC concepts.

Responsibilities

• Translate product requirements into technical solutions with engineers and stakeholders.
• Design data transformations and leverage cloud-native tools for data modeling and quality.
• Refactor legacy on-prem systems to cloud-based services and ensure security compliance.
• Contribute to authentication, identity management, and RBAC/ABAC frameworks.
• Lead architecture discussions, code reviews, and CI/CD improvements.
• Collaborate with partner engineers and mission heroes to deliver solutions.

Skills

Software engineering

Cloud-native architecture

API development

Leadership/mentorship

Communication

Tools

Kubernetes

AWS

Azure

GCP

Argo Workflows

REST APIs

FastAPI

ASP.NET

CI/CD

Job description

Role Description:

Defense Unicorns is seeking a Senior to Staff Software Engineer to help drive our transformation from legacy, on-premises software to a modern, cloud-native platform. In this role you will play a key part in designing and building our next-generation, cloud native maintenance planning and execution tool. You'll be joining Defense Unicorns' US Navy team and be responsible for creating and owning end-to-end project delivery, working with stakeholders across multiple vendors, platform engineering teams, and government organizations. You will work closely with the government project lead and be responsible for shaping the technical requirements of this effort, driving the project from development, user acceptance testing, production transition, and sustainment.

Responsibilities:

• Partner with software engineers, data architects, platform engineers, and a wide variety of stakeholders to translate ambiguous product requirements into technical solutions
• Create optimized transformations to clean, enrich, and model data, utilizing cloud-native tools
• Ensure data quality, integrity, and compliance, maintaining metadata and lineage
• Help refactor and modernize existing on-prem systems into distributed, cloud-based services
• Contribute to the design of authentication, identity management, and RBAC/ABAC frameworks
• Participate in architectural discussions, code reviews, and ongoing technical improvements
• Drive best practices in microservice design, testing, observability, and CI/CD automation
• Collaborate closely with partner company engineers and stakeholders to devise the best solutions for our Mission Heroes
• Collaborate with the Defense Unicorns product team sharing improvements and growth opportunities for future projects
• Comfortable in an asynchronous, all remote environment
• Actively participate in communities of practice via Slack and Github Issues
• Integrate software products with existing defense systems, ensuring seamless interoperability and adherence to security protocols
• Own architecture decisions and ensure technical quality across the engineering team.
• Develop comprehensive documentation, including design specifications, user manuals, and maintenance guides
• Stay abreast of emerging technologies and industry trends to inform product enhancements and innovation
• Provide technical mentorship and elevate engineering standards across the team
• Communicate effectively with all levels of engineers and stakeholders internal and external to the company
• Influence product direction through deep understanding of user needs and system constraints

Travel Expectations/Requirements: 15-20%

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.

Preferred Experience and Qualifications:

• 7+ years (senior) or 10+ years (staff) experience with software engineering
• Experience building a software tool with core focuses on software lifecycle and management
• Expert level proficiency in at least one modern programming language (e.g., Go, TypeScript, Python) with the ability to write idiomatic, testable code
• Strong understanding of system design, API development, workflow orchestration (Argo Workflows preferred), relational databases, and cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure)
• Deep knowledge of database design, schema design, indexing, and query optimization
• Past experience leading a team through the decomposition of a complex monolithic application design into small, independent services that communicate with lightweight APIs
• Modern API design experience, beyond basic CRUD operations; use of RESTful services, and high confidence utilizing tools such as FastAPI in Python, ASP.NET in C#, or equivalent
• Experience with implementation of authorization and data governance, security telemetry pipelines, policy enforcement, and role-based access control to ensure compliance and data privacy across enterprise systems
• Excited to assess intricate problems, propose solutions, and implement them effectively
• Familiar with Core Kubernetes Concepts including but not limited to Controllers, Operators, and CRDs
• Passion for clean architecture, automation, and iterative modernization
• Familiar with Department of Defense acquisition or sustainment software modernization projects
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, comfortable conveying technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences as well as leading technical working sessions with partners and mission heroes
• Analytical, problem-solving mindset with a high attention to detail
• Experience working proactively, managing time efficiently, and thriving in a vibrant remote work environment!

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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