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Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Onsite
Not Available
Defense Unicorns is seeking a senior DevSecOps Engineer to embed with a government team and its technology partners building an emerging AI-powered engineering ecosystem.
This role sits at the intersection of platform engineering, cybersecurity, compliance, and software delivery. The engineer will help establish secure, automated, and repeatable pipelines that allow software, AI models, and agentic capabilities to move rapidly from development into operational environments while identifying cybersecurity and compliance risks early—before formal security testing.
The ideal candidate is a hands-on DevSecOps engineer with deep experience in Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, NIST 800-53, and the RMF/ATO process. They should be comfortable working directly with government personnel and multiple commercial technology partners, troubleshooting across technical boundaries, and translating security requirements into practical engineering controls rather than treating compliance as a downstream gate.
This is an embedded engineering role—not a traditional security or compliance staff-augmentation position. The engineer will help the team move quickly, build security into the development lifecycle, and create repeatable patterns that can scale from the initial prototype environment into higher-classification operational environments.
Travel / Onsite Expectations: Must be local to the National Capital Region and able to work onsite at the government campus in Springfield, VA as mission requirements evolve. The initial prototype environment may support a hybrid schedule, but the role should be prepared for increasing onsite and SCIF interaction as the effort transitions to higher-classification environments.
The successful engineer makes security an accelerator rather than a gate. They help the team identify risk early, automate compliance and evidence wherever practical, keep the delivery pipeline moving, and establish secure patterns that can be reproduced as the environment scales from prototype to classified operations.
Full 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.
Defense 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.
We 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.
Defense 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.
Don’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.
At 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.