{"id":3371732,"url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-senior-ai-software-engineer-rd271","title":"Senior AI Software Engineer (RD271)","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":76,"open_postings":12,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.75,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":69,"computed_at":"2026-11-02T06:13:15Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"senior","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["United States"],"countries":["US"],"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":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"Azure","optional":true},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":true},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":true},{"name":"GCP","optional":true},{"name":"GitOps","optional":true},{"name":"Go","optional":true},{"name":"Helm","optional":true},{"name":"Kustomize","optional":true},{"name":"LLM","optional":true},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":true},{"name":"Pulumi","optional":true},{"name":"Terraform","optional":true},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-27T23:01:33Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-27","last_verified_at":"2026-11-02T04:44:31Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":5,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":5},"description":"EMPLOYER IS A CONTRACTOR FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. THIS POSITION REQUIRES U.S. CITIZENSHIP.\nRole Description: \nDefense Unicorns is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join our Ark team, building an AI-native software development product that helps Mission Heroes create, package, and deliver secure applications into mission environments.\nArk bridges the gap between creating software and making it deployable. While AI coding tools make software development increasingly accessible, delivering applications into secure, regulated, and disconnected environments still requires specialized engineering expertise. Ark combines AI-driven workflows with UDS tooling to automate application development, packaging, validation, and delivery preparation.\nThis is an opportunity to help shape a rapidly evolving product at the intersection of AI, software engineering, and secure software delivery. You’ll work on complex challenges involving AI agent orchestration, isolated development environments, automated validation, and integrating AI capabilities with deterministic systems that produce reliable, deployable software.\nAs a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll help shape the technical direction of Ark, own the design and delivery of complex capabilities, and collaborate with Engineering, Product, UX, and Mission Heroes to turn challenging customer problems into intuitive, reliable solutions. You’ll have opportunities to influence architecture decisions and help establish engineering practices as the product evolves.\nWhat You’ll Work On:\nBuilding AI-driven workflows that help users create, package, validate, and maintain mission applications\nDeveloping agent orchestration capabilities that combine AI reasoning with deterministic tooling, validation, and human oversight\nCreating secure, isolated development environments for executing AI agents and building software\nIntegrating UDS packaging, Kubernetes, and software delivery tooling into automated development workflows\nBuilding systems that manage persistent application state, development workflows, and asynchronous execution\nDeveloping automated testing and validation capabilities to ensure generated software and UDS packages are secure and deployable\nCollaborating with Product, UX, and Mission Heroes to turn complex software development and delivery challenges into intuitive product experiences\nResponsibilities: \nOwn the design, implementation, testing, and delivery of complex software features and systems\nDrive pragmatic technical decisions and contribute to architecture across product components\nProactively identify and resolve ambiguity in collaboration with Product, UX, and Mission Heroes\nDebug complex issues across Kubernetes, virtualization, storage, networking, and operating systems\nImprove the reliability, security, performance, observability, and maintainability of our software\nReview code, mentor teammates, and help establish strong engineering practices\nDocument technical decisions, communicate clearly, and collaborate effectively across teams\nTravel Expectations/Requirements: 0-5%\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:\n5+ years of professional software engineering experience\nStrong proficiency in a modern programming language (Go and TypeScript preferred)\nExperience designing, building, and operating production software products\nExperience integrating LLMs, AI agents, or AI-powered capabilities into software applications\nStrong understanding of APIs, distributed systems, asynchronous workflows, and application architecture\nExperience with Kubernetes, containers, and cloud-native application development\nExperience building reliable, testable systems with automated validation and CI/CD pipelines\nAbility to navigate ambiguity, evaluate technical tradeoffs, and independently deliver complex solutions\nStrong communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills\nNice to Have:\nExperience building AI agent orchestration systems, coding agents, or AI-powered developer tools\nFamiliarity with LLM evaluation, tool calling, MCP, and agent execution frameworks\nExperience with secure sandboxing, isolated execution environments, or Kata Containers\nExperience building developer platforms, CLIs, or software development automation\nFamiliarity with Zarf, Helm, Kubernetes operators, or software packaging workflows\nExperience with software supply chain security, artifact validation, and deployment automation\nExperience developing software for air-gapped, regulated, or restricted environments\nContributions to open-source projects or developer tooling\n\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":8152,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"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":"2026-10-28T01:16:58Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":63,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.632,"p_room":1,"age_days":5,"expected_fill_days":69,"reasons":["conf:1","stale_co","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-02T06:13:15Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":201250,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-senior-ai-software-engineer-rd271","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-senior-ai-software-engineer-rd271.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-02T08:13:14Z","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":11436,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-03T00:00:00Z"}},"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-senior-ai-software-engineer-rd271"},{"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-senior-ai-software-engineer-rd271"},{"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-senior-ai-software-engineer-rd271"},{"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-senior-ai-software-engineer-rd271\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fdefense-unicorns-senior-ai-software-engineer-rd271"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3371732}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"defenseunicorns.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3371732},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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