At Defense Unicorns, we make software a strategic deterrent with solutions that promote data independence, portability, and efficiency. Backed by Sapphire.
About the role
Deploy and harden UDS Data Capability in the mission hero's environment — stand up UDS Store (Iceberg, Rook/Ceph, pgvector, Postgres), wire up UDS Transit for air-gap data movement, configure UDS Govern policies (Pepr/Lula), and integrate UDS Connect (Strimzi/Kafka) where streaming or legacy connectors are required. Found on 1752vc Careers, the job board for startup and VC roles.
What they're looking for
- Experience working in tactical edge and interoperable mission environments, including TAK Server administration, ATAK/WinTAK, tactical communications, and disconnected or air-gapped systems
- Experience with streaming and data integration technologies, including Kafka or equivalent messaging platforms, stream processing, change data capture (CDC), and integration of legacy systems into modern data pipelines
- Hands-on experience building, scheduling, monitoring, troubleshooting, and recovering production data pipelines using Airflow, Dagster, Argo Workflows, or comparable orchestration tools
- Working knowledge of data governance, cataloging, access control, and auditability, including REST catalogs, ABAC/RBAC, OIDC/OAuth, and data lineage
- Strong SQL proficiency and experience designing data models and schemas for analytical and operational workloads
- Hands-on production Kubernetes experience, including deployments, operators, CRDs, storage classes, networking, and troubleshooting
More about this role
EMPLOYER IS A CONTRACTOR FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. THIS POSITION REQUIRES U.S. CITIZENSHIP.
This is a forward-deployed engineering role . You'll work shoulder-to-shoulder with mission heroes- the users, operators, and program engineers who run real workloads in real DoD environments- and lead the software integration of modular Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS) sensors and effectors. You will deploy, harden, integrate, and operate our modular C-UAS solution.
Forward-deployed means aligned with the mission hero , not always on a plane . Most of the work is remote. You'll travel to sites when the engagement genuinely calls for it — initial standup, in-SCIF integration work, on-the-ground incident response, training, and knowledge transfer- and you'll be on a video call or in a shared chat with that same mission hero the rest of the time. The job is being their engineer, not living at their desk.
You are a cross-functional engineering leader. You can take responsibility for the full breadth of a data and software integration platform- make it work where it has to work, analyze what's running through it, and solve problems in real time for the mission hero. About 20% of your...
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