{"id":39288,"url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-platform-engineer-comd158","title":"Senior Platform Engineer","company":{"id":8737,"name":"Defense Unicorns","domain":"defenseunicorns.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/defense-unicorns","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":74,"open_postings":12,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.833,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":67,"computed_at":"2026-10-27T05:46:45Z"}},"role":"DevOps","role_family":"DevOps","seniority":"senior","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"posting_text","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"inferred","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":148750,"max":201250,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":201250},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Amazon EKS","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"Azure AKS","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"OpenTofu","optional":false},{"name":"Terraform","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":true},{"name":"GCP","optional":true},{"name":"GitHub","optional":true},{"name":"GitLab","optional":true},{"name":"GitOps","optional":true},{"name":"Helm","optional":true},{"name":"K3s","optional":true},{"name":"Kustomize","optional":true},{"name":"OpenShift","optional":true},{"name":"Pulumi","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-06-12T16:57:23Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-22","last_verified_at":"2026-10-28T01:16:58Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":137,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":1,"flags":[],"days_open":136},"description":"EMPLOYER IS A CONTRACTOR FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. THIS POSITION WILL REQUIRE U.S. CITIZENSHIP. \nRole Description: \nWe 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.\nResponsibilities: \nWhat You'll Own: \nDeploy & Operate: Stand up and manage UDS environments across AWS EKS, Azure AKS, and on-prem clusters for government-backed commercial vendors. You own uptime.\n Build & Ship: Create custom UDS packages and application-specific modules that streamline deployment. Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, OpenTofu) is your daily driver.\nAdvise & 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.\nTroubleshoot & Resolve: Dive into complex UDS issues, meet SLA commitments, and provide on-call support when the mission demands it.\nListen & 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.\nAnalyze & Optimize: Mine operational and usage data to spot trends, improve delivery strategies, and drive continuous process improvement.\nShare what comes next:\nOur 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.\nWhat that looks like in practice:\nDefine the playbook: Establish how we onboard customers, structure deployments, and scale support - there’s greenfield space to build the right way from day one.\nInfluence 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.\nGrow the team: As the practice scales, early engineers set the technical bar, mentor new hires, and shape the culture of the group.\nEvolve the offerings: Help design new service packages, training programs, and delivery models that become part of how Defense Unicorns goes to market.\nIf you’ve ever wanted to join a team early enough to leave your fingerprints on everything - how it operates, what it ships, and who it becomes - this is that opportunity.\nTravel Expectations/Requirements: Less than 25% expected\nThe 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. \nPreferred Experience and Qualifications:\nProven experience as a Platform Engineer or similar role, with a focus on system architecture and development.\nStrong knowledge of hybrid cloud architectures, including networking, RBAC, and storage for cloud and on-prem clusters.\nHands-on experience with Azure AKS, AWS EKS, or on-perm Kubernetes (e.g RKE2, K3s, OpenShift). \nExperience with Helm, GitOps, and Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, OpenTofu) for infrastructure, cluster provisioning and lifecycle management. \nKnowledgeable about DevSecOps/DevOps and CI/CD pipelines running on GitLab or GitHub.\nComfortable serving as the primary technical interface for customers, providing architecture guidance, production support, and platform expertise.\nStrong analytical skills and the ability to interpret complex data for informed decision-making.\nExcellent communication skills and effectiveness in a remote team environment.\nSelf-motivated, proactive, and able to work independently with minimal supervision.\nWillingness to travel as needed for on-site training and support.\nDoD IAT Level II certification (such as Security+).\nA DoD Secret or higher clearance is not required but preferred.\nFull 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. \nFull 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. \nRemote - USA\n$148,750—$201,250 USD\nWho We Are\nDefense 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.\nWhat We Do\nWe 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.\nWho We Serve\nDefense 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.\nWhat We Work On\nKubernetes\nCloud Environments (AWS/GCP and Azure)\nInfrastructure-as-code (like Terraform/Pulumi)\nContinuous Delivery and automation tooling\nGitOps\nContainers\nCNCF projects and open source products and packages\nHelm/Kustomize-Value Stream Mapping\nBuilding and improving security delivery\nBuilding Kubernetes and cloud native applications\nBenefits Our Unicorns Enjoy\nHealth:\nMedical/Dental/Vision\nPremiums are 100% Company Paid\nHealth Savings Account\nLife Insurance\nDisability Insurance\nFinancial:\n401k Retirement Plan\nCompany Stock Options\nHome Office Budget\nLeave:\nWe 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\nPaid Parental Leave\nLearning:\nReimbursement for approved trainings/subscriptions\nConferences (travel, lodging, and fees)\nDon’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. \nAt 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.\nCCPA DISCLOSURE","description_format":"text","description_chars":7865,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":true,"languages":[]},"benefits":["401k plan","Flexible time off","Home office","Life insurance","Parental leave","Retirement plans","Stock options"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["National Security","Virtualization & Containers","DevSecOps"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-06-12T16:57:23Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-08-26T17:43:47Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-10-22T19:46:20Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":12,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.429,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":136,"expected_fill_days":67,"reasons":["conf:2","stale_co","velocity","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-27T05:46:45Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":201250,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-platform-engineer-comd158","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-platform-engineer-comd158.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-28T02:12:06Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":2973,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-29T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":8737},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=8737"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fdefense-unicorns-platform-engineer-comd158"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fdefense-unicorns-platform-engineer-comd158"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fdefense-unicorns-platform-engineer-comd158"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/defense-unicorns-platform-engineer-comd158\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fdefense-unicorns-platform-engineer-comd158"}]}