{"id":1654614,"url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-software-engineer-software-defined-networking-sdn","title":"Software Engineer - Software Defined Networking (SDN)","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":70,"open_postings":8,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":69,"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"senior","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"posting_text","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":"Bash","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"DNS","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"TCP/IP","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":true},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"Azure","optional":true},{"name":"Chaos Engineering","optional":true},{"name":"GCP","optional":true},{"name":"GitOps","optional":true},{"name":"Helm","optional":true},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":true},{"name":"Kustomize","optional":true},{"name":"Pulumi","optional":true},{"name":"Terraform","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-01T20:06:44Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-01","last_verified_at":"2026-10-16T15:18:21Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":14,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":14},"description":"Role Description: \nDefense Unicorns is seeking a Software Engineer to own the assessment, hardening, testing, and modernization of a Government-provided software-defined networking (SDN) baseline capability. You will join the Defense Unicorns Navy Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team and be responsible for understanding an unfamiliar codebase, improving its security and maintainability, and delivering a reliable software baseline that can be sustained as mission requirements evolve.\nThis is a software-engineering role with a systems and networking focus. You will work directly with source code, build systems, dependencies, runtime behavior, test suites, and open-source integrations. You will diagnose complex issues across application and network boundaries, remediate vulnerabilities, and leverage AI tools to maintain and develop applications within DevSecOps pipelines. Additionally, you will establish disciplined engineering practices around code quality, release readiness, and long-term sustainment.\nWorking with Defense Unicorns platform engineers and Government stakeholders, you will integrate the SDN application codebase to ensure the software can be built, tested, packaged, deployed, and operated successfully for Navy environments.\nResponsibilities: \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.\nOwn the technical assessment of an SDN codebase, including architecture, build process, dependency evaluation and management, runtime components, test coverage, security posture, and upstream open source relationships.\nDesign and implement secure, maintainable changes that remediate vulnerabilities, improve resilience, and preserve traceability between upstream software, Government-owned code, configurations, and local patches.\nDevelop trustworthy unit, integration, end-to-end, regression, and failure-mode tests for hardening and modernization changes.\nInstitute AI-enabled tooling to enable the hardening and maintenance of the SDN application codebase.\nDebug complex behavior across application, Linux, and network boundaries, including traffic flows, routing, segmentation, identity, failover, telemetry, and performance.\nPartner with platform engineers on container readiness, packaging, CI/CD, deployment workflows, and automated security scanning while owning code-level triage and remediation.\nSupport lab validation, demonstrations, release acceptance, and conversion of operational findings into durable fixes and regression tests.\nProduce clear technical documentation, participate in architecture and code reviews, communicate tradeoffs to stakeholders, and mentor other engineers.\nBasic Experience and Qualifications\n5+ years of software-engineering experience, proficiency in C++, Python and Bash scripting, and demonstrated ownership of production or legacy codebases.\nStrong Linux fundamentals, including services, processes, permissions, logging, package management, and command-line troubleshooting.\nStrong networking fundamentals, including TCP/IP, routing, DNS, TLS, segmentation, interfaces, policy enforcement, and traffic analysis.\nExperience with secure software development, dependency management, vulnerability triage, patching, code review, and remediation.\nStrong testing discipline across unit, integration, end-to-end, and regression testing.\nWorking knowledge of containers, version control, build automation, CI/CD, registries, observability, and modern release practices.\nStrong problem-solving, communication, and documentation skills, including design documents, technical assessments, and runbooks.\nU.S. citizenship and ACTIVE US Government SECRET security clearance or higher.\nPreferred Experience and Qualifications:\nExperience developing or sustaining SDN, network orchestration, routing, virtual network functions, network appliances, or other network-control software.\nExperience containerizing VM-based or monolithic software and maintaining upstream open source integrations, forks, or patches.\nStrong familiarity with agentic AI-assisted engineering tools and workflows for maintaining and developing software products, accelerating codebase analysis and remediation, and supporting automated resilience, failure-mode, and chaos testing.\nFamiliarity with Kubernetes, Helm, GitOps, OCI artifacts, and/or software delivery.\nExperience with SAST, DAST, software composition analysis, SBOMs, container scanning, STIGs, and automated security checks.\nExperience with performance, resilience, or chaos engineering and observability for distributed or networked systems.\nExperience modernizing and migrating applications from virtual machine-based environments to containerized deployments.\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":8202,"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":["Enterprise Networks","National Security","Virtualization & Containers","DevSecOps"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-02T01:18:48Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":14,"expected_fill_days":69,"reasons":["conf:3","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":201250,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-software-engineer-software-defined-networking-sdn","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-software-engineer-software-defined-networking-sdn.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-16T18:26:38Z","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":3527,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-17T00:00:00Z"}},"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-software-engineer-software-defined-networking-sdn"},{"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-software-engineer-software-defined-networking-sdn"},{"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-software-engineer-software-defined-networking-sdn"},{"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-software-engineer-software-defined-networking-sdn\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fdefense-unicorns-software-engineer-software-defined-networking-sdn"}]}