{"id":1472541,"url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-technical-mission-director","title":"Technical Mission Director (FedD235)","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":68,"computed_at":"2026-10-30T05:48:23Z"}},"role":"Sales","role_family":"Sales","seniority":"head","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Springfield, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":145000,"max":185000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":185000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":7,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Agile","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Platform Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Scrum","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":true},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"Azure","optional":true},{"name":"GCP","optional":true},{"name":"GitLab","optional":true},{"name":"GitOps","optional":true},{"name":"Helm","optional":true},{"name":"Kustomize","optional":true},{"name":"NIST 800-53","optional":true},{"name":"OpenShift","optional":true},{"name":"Pulumi","optional":true},{"name":"Terraform","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-29T14:54:30Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-05","last_verified_at":"2026-10-30T14:27:28Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":31,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":31},"description":"Technical Mission Director\nDefense Unicorns | Senior Technical Delivery Leadership\nRole Description\nDefense Unicorns is seeking a senior Technical Mission Director to embed with a government team leading a fast-moving, multi-vendor AI and software modernization effort. This role owns day-to-day execution across government stakeholders, engineering teams, and commercial technology partners, creating the structure and tempo needed to move from prototype to operational capability.\nThe ideal candidate is an Agile delivery leader with strong technical fluency across modern software, cloud, DevSecOps, AI/ML, data, and platform engineering. They must be credible with engineers and senior government leaders, able to run Scrum in a high-tempo environment, and comfortable turning ambiguity into decisions, priorities, and action.\nResponsibilities\nOwn day-to-day execution for a multidisciplinary government/industry team and establish the Agile operating rhythm, including Scrum ceremonies, backlog management, sprint planning, reviews, retrospectives, and release planning.\nCoordinate government stakeholders and multiple technology vendors, keeping priorities, dependencies, milestones, and technical risks visible and driving blockers to resolution.\nLead daily cross-vendor synchronization without allowing meetings to become a substitute for execution; create clear owners, decisions, and next actions.\nMaintain an integrated delivery plan and communicate concise updates on mission outcomes, technical risk, resource needs, decisions, and schedule.\nWork closely with the Technical Solutions Architect and engineering leads across platform, DevSecOps, data, and AI/agentic disciplines to keep execution aligned with the evolving architecture.\nMaintain enough technical depth to recognize integration, security, data, deployment, or architecture issues early and engage the right experts quickly.\nCoordinate the transition from prototype environments into classified operational environments, including readiness, dependencies, and increasing onsite/SCIF collaboration.\nAct as a trusted technical thought partner to government customers: surface risks, frame options, challenge assumptions constructively, and help translate mission needs into executable technical priorities.\nIdentify follow-on mission needs, expansion opportunities, and adjacent use cases; understand the customer's acquisition and buying motion and partner with DU growth leadership to shape actionable opportunities.\nCapture lessons learned and repeatable delivery patterns, continuously reducing coordination overhead and improving engineering velocity.\nBuild durable customer relationships and represent Defense Unicorns as a technical thought leader rather than simply a delivery resource.\nMinimum Experience and Qualifications\nActive TS/SCI clearance.\nLocal to the National Capital Region (NCR) and able to support regular onsite work at a government facility in Springfield, Virginia; available for increasing onsite/SCIF interaction as the effort matures.\n7+ years leading Agile software, technology, or mission programs, preferably in government or other mission-critical environments.\nDemonstrated hands-on experience with Scrum and Agile delivery, including backlog management, sprint planning, dependency management, retrospectives, and release planning.\nExperience leading cross-functional teams and coordinating multiple concurrent technical workstreams, government stakeholders, and technology vendors.\nStrong technical fluency in modern software delivery, DevSecOps, cloud, Kubernetes, CI/CD, AI/ML, and data platforms.\nAbility to understand technical architecture, dependencies, integration risks, and engineering tradeoffs well enough to drive informed program decisions.\nExceptional communication, organization, facilitation, and problem-solving skills with the ability to operate effectively in high-tempo, ambiguous environments.\nPreferred Experience and Qualifications\nExperience leading programs involving generative AI, AI agents, data platforms, or enterprise AI ecosystems.\nExperience working across technologies such as OpenShift/OpenShift AI, GitLab, NVIDIA AI, enterprise data platforms, or comparable commercial technologies.\nFamiliarity with NIST 800-53, RMF, ATO processes, continuous authorization, and security engineering.\nExperience supporting systems across multiple security classifications or transitioning capabilities into Secret or TS/SCI environments.\nExperience with complex multi-vendor integration efforts where no single provider owns the complete solution.\nExperience advising senior government customers on technology strategy, mission modernization, or platform adoption.\nExperience identifying and shaping follow-on opportunities, expansion paths, or new mission applications within an existing customer.\nCSM, PSM, SAFe, PMI-ACP, PMP, or comparable Agile/program certification.\nTravel / Onsite Expectations\nThis position is NCR-local and requires regular onsite support at the government team's Springfield campus. Some hybrid flexibility, but regular onsite/SCIF engagement is expected.\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$145,000—$185,000 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":8455,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":7,"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":"2026-09-29T16:59:08Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":55,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.611,"p_room":0.9,"age_days":30,"expected_fill_days":68,"reasons":["conf:0","stale_co","velocity","win:mid"],"computed_at":"2026-10-30T05:48:23Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":185000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-technical-mission-director","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/defense-unicorns-technical-mission-director.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-30T17:16:56Z","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":5718,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-31T00:00:00Z"}},"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-technical-mission-director"},{"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-technical-mission-director"},{"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-technical-mission-director"},{"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-technical-mission-director\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fdefense-unicorns-technical-mission-director"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":1472541}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"defenseunicorns.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":1472541},"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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