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Role 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
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.
