{"id":39271,"url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-senior-platform-engineer-fedd144","title":"Senior Platform Engineer (FedD144)","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":80,"open_postings":12,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.583,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":69,"computed_at":"2026-10-31T05:58:55Z"}},"role":"DevOps","role_family":"DevOps","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":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":111000,"max_usd":207000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":395},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Agile","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"GitOps","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"Azure","optional":true},{"name":"GCP","optional":true},{"name":"Helm","optional":true},{"name":"Kustomize","optional":true},{"name":"Pulumi","optional":true},{"name":"Terraform","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-10T21:09:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-30","last_verified_at":"2026-10-31T21:40:23Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":113,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":113},"description":"EMPLOYER IS A CONTRACTOR FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. THIS POSITION WILL REQUIRE AN ACTIVE SECRET CLEARANCE TO APPLY. \nStaff Platform Engineer\nDefense Unicorns is seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to join our team. This role is responsible for designing, building, and owning the runtime production environment that bridges applications (custom development, COTS, and OSS) to the underlying platform. You will drive platform architecture decisions, set engineering standards, and serve as the technical anchor between application teams and platform teams.\nThis is a hands-on technical leadership role. You will own platform strategy and implementation end-to-end: defining technical roadmaps, solving complex problems that span multiple domains, driving cross-team delivery efficiency, and mentoring engineers across the team. We are looking for someone who builds and owns platforms, not someone who operates within infrastructure others have designed.\nKey Responsibilities\nArchitect and maintain scalable runtime production environments across cloud-native and containerized systems, including transforming applications into Kubernetes-friendly formats for bare-metal deployment\nOwn the technical roadmap for the platform vertical, identifying gaps, planning initiatives, and aligning engineering effort to mission objectives\nProvide mentorship to engineers across the team, fostering professional development and raising the technical bar\nIdentify technical overlap across projects and guide teams on leveraging each other for efficient delivery\nWork closely with Mission Managers, providing insights on engineering competency, capacity, velocity, and alignment with mission objectives\nCollaborate with product teams, providing feedback on product fit and contributing to product direction based on production usage\nWork with customers to define technical roadmaps that align to mission objectives\nAdvocate for and enforce DevSecOps practices across the platform layer, including security automation, container security, and compliance\nEvaluate and select optimal methods for solving complex business problems, assessing new products and their potential impact on mission objectives\nDrive continuous improvement in CI/CD pipelines, deployment patterns, and operational tooling\nTravel requirements: 25% travel\nRequired Qualifications\nUS citizenship and eligible to obtain a Secret security clearance\nExpertise in solving highly technical problems that span multiple knowledge domains\nDeep knowledge in 1-2 key technologies such as pipelines, GitOps, Kubernetes, or Go\nDemonstrated experience with Kubernetes and container-based systems\nExpert with YAML\nProficient with security automation and familiarity with API Security, Container Security, and Cloud Security\nProficient in architecture security design, monitoring, and performance instrumentation in complex enterprise environments\nExperience with continuous delivery, distributed architectures, everything-as-code, containerization, and cloud services\nProficient in identifying and articulating gaps in existing processes and iterating toward better ways of working\nProven track record of evaluating and selecting optimal methods for solving complex business problems\nStrong problem-solving skills and ability to operate independently in ambiguous environments\nStrong communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively across cross-functional teams\nExperience working on a team following an Agile framework in a remote environment\nPreferred Qualifications\nDoD 8570 IAT II certification or ability to obtain\nExperience in Department of Defense work, specifically on a production ATO system\nExperience with Big Bang, Iron Bank, and/or C-ATO processes\nExpert in DevSecOps/DevOps and CI/CD theory and implementation\nThe listed responsibilities are not exhaustive and additional responsibilities may be assigned based on the evolving needs of the organization.\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":7026,"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","Professional development","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":"2026-07-10T21:09:00Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":22,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.6,"p_room":0.36,"age_days":112,"expected_fill_days":69,"reasons":["conf:2","stale_co","velocity","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-31T05:58:55Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-senior-platform-engineer-fedd144","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-senior-platform-engineer-fedd144.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-01T00:42:12Z","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":1260,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-02T00:00:00Z"}},"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-platform-engineer-fedd144"},{"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-platform-engineer-fedd144"},{"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-platform-engineer-fedd144"},{"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-platform-engineer-fedd144\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fdefense-unicorns-senior-platform-engineer-fedd144"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":39271}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"defenseunicorns.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":39271},"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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