[Remote] Senior Engineer - Data Platform

Note The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Defense Unicorns is seeking a Senior Engineer to join the founding team of a new product capability being built from the ground up. In this role, you will work as a core member of the UDS Data team, collaborating with product leadership and defense customers to translate operational data problems into software solutions. Responsibilities Own the design, delivery, and production quality of platform capabilities end to end — from initial architecture through deployment and observability Build and maintain open source infrastructure packages for airgap and cloud-native environments Write comprehensive tests at every level — unit, integration, and end-to-end — and hold the rest of the team to the same standard Work directly with product and customers to translate mission problems into platform capabilities Develop technical documentation including design specifications, ADRs, and runbooks Contribute to relevant open source communities and represent Defense Unicorns as a technical peer Provide technical mentorship and elevate engineering standards across the team Operate effectively in an asynchronous, fully remote environment Skills 5+ years of software engineering experience with a track record of shipping production systems Proficiency in Go and/or Rust; comfort with Python for tooling and scripting Strong understanding of Kubernetes — operators, CRDs, controllers, network policies, and workload identity Experience with distributed systems concepts — consistency models, replication, failure modes, and recovery Strong testing discipline — integration tests, end-to-end tests, and a clear opinion on what makes a test suite trustworthy Strong communication and documentation skills — comfortable writing ADRs, design docs, and runbooks U.S. citizenship and the ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance Experience designing and building data infrastructure — databases, object storage, streaming systems, or data pipelines Experience packaging and deploying software in airgap or disconnected environments Familiarity with PostgreSQL (including extensions such as pgvector), S3-compatible object-storage, and streaming systems such as Kafka Experience building and maintaining REST APIs and defining API schemas (ConnectRPC with protocol buffers, OpenAPI) Experience with CI/CD pipelines, GitOps practices, and DevSecOps workflows Excited to work in the open contributions to open source projects are a strong plus ✨🦄 Benefits Medical/Dental/Vision Premiums are 100% Company Paid Health Savings Account Life Insurance Disability Insurance 401k Retirement Plan Company Stock Options Home Office Budget 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 Reimbursement for approved trainings/subscriptions Conferences (travel, lodging, and fees) Company Overview Defense Unicorns is a software startup that provides open-source software and AI capabilities for national security systems. It was founded in 2021, and is headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA, with a workforce of 51-200 employees. Its website is https//www.defenseunicorns.com.