Platform Engineer

We are seeking a dedicated and experienced Platform Engineer with strong Kubernetes proficiency to join our Customer Success team. This role involves managing Unicorn Delivery Service (UDS) deployments, generating training documentation, and training customers on our software tools. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in customer relationship management, technical expertise, demonstrating a strong understanding of system architecture, and a passion for helping customers achieve their goals with the UDS platform.

• Deploy & Operate: Stand up and manage UDS environments across AWS EKS, Azure AKS, and on-prem clusters for government-backed commercial vendors. You own uptime.
• Build & Ship: Create custom UDS packages and application-specific modules that streamline deployment. Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, OpenTofu) is your daily driver.
• Advise & Train: Serve as the primary technical interface for customers — run onboarding, develop training content, deliver remote and on-site sessions that make complex platforms feel approachable.
• Troubleshoot & Resolve: Dive into complex UDS issues, meet SLA commitments, and provide on-call support when the mission demands it.
• Listen & Improve: Gather customer and community feedback, translate it into actionable insights for product and engineering, and experiment with new tools and techniques to push deployment efficiency forward.
• Analyze & Optimize: Mine operational and usage data to spot trends, improve delivery strategies, and drive continuous process improvement.

Our Commercial Delivery Engineering practice is growing fast — and we’re looking for engineers who want to help shape what it becomes. You won’t just execute; you’ll have real influence over the processes, tooling, delivery patterns, and customer engagement models as we scale.

• Define the playbook: Establish how we onboard customers, structure deployments, and scale support — there’s greenfield space to build the right way from day one.
• Influence the product: Your customer insights feed directly into product and engineering roadmaps. When you see a gap in UDS, you have a short path to getting it fixed or built.
• Grow the team: As the practice scales, early engineers set the technical bar, mentor new hires, and shape the culture of the group.
• Evolve the offerings: Help design new service packages, training programs, and delivery models that become part of how Defense Unicorns goes to market.

• Proven experience as a Platform Engineer or similar role, with a focus on system architecture and development.
• Strong knowledge of hybrid cloud architectures, including networking, RBAC, and storage for cloud and on-prem clusters.
• Hands-on experience with Azure AKS, AWS EKS, or on-perm Kubernetes (e.g RKE2, K3s, OpenShift). 
• Experience with Helm, GitOps, and Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, OpenTofu) for infrastructure, cluster provisioning and lifecycle management. 
• Knowledgeable about DevSecOps/DevOps and CI/CD pipelines running on GitLab or GitHub.
• Comfortable serving as the primary technical interface for customers, providing architecture guidance, production support, and platform expertise.
• Strong analytical skills and the ability to interpret complex data for informed decision-making.
• Excellent communication skills and effectiveness in a remote team environment.
• Self-motivated, proactive, and able to work independently with minimal supervision.
• Willingness to travel as needed for on-site training and support.
• DoD IAT Level II certification (such as Security+).
• A DoD Secret or higher clearance is not required but preferred.

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.

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.

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.

• 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

• 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)

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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