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Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Onsite
Mission Value: Serve as the technical authority across a complex, multi-vendor AI and software platform, helping the government team make sound architecture decisions, resolve cross-platform integration challenges, and establish repeatable patterns that accelerate mission delivery.
Defense Unicorns is seeking a senior Technical Lead / Platform Solution Architect to embed with a government team and serve as the go-to technical subject matter expert across the platform architecture. This individual will connect the mission, engineering, security, data, AI, and vendor perspectives into a coherent technical approach and become a trusted technology advisor to the mission hero.
The role is intentionally hands-on and strategic. The Technical Lead will work across Kubernetes/OpenShift, GitLab and CI/CD, AI/agent infrastructure, enterprise data services, cloud infrastructure, security controls, and integration patterns. They will guide technical decisions, challenge assumptions, identify architectural risks early, and help the team move from prototype to operational capability. The ideal candidate can move fluently between executive-level mission conversations and deep technical discussions with engineers and OEM teams.
Own the end-to-end technical architecture and serve as the primary technical SME across the platform ecosystem.Become a trusted technology advisor to the mission hero, translating mission objectives into pragmatic technical choices and providing clear recommendations, tradeoffs, and risk assessments.Create and maintain the architectural “big picture” across application, platform, AI, data, networking, security, identity, and integration layers.Lead technical integration across commercial and government technologies, including Kubernetes/OpenShift, GitLab, AI/ML services, enterprise data platforms, and supporting security tooling.Identify architectural dependencies, integration risks, bottlenecks, and technical debt early enough to prevent downstream schedule or mission impacts.Guide engineering teams in establishing repeatable patterns for deployment, configuration, observability, identity, secrets, APIs, data access, and lifecycle management.Work directly with OEM engineering and professional services teams to resolve cross-platform issues and ensure vendor solutions fit the overall architecture.Evaluate emerging AI, agentic, cloud-native, and platform technologies and advise the government team on practical adoption, integration, and sequencing.Help establish technical patterns that can be reproduced across classified environments and support the transition from prototype to operational use.Partner with the DevSecOps engineer to identify security and compliance risks early, incorporating NIST 800-53/RMF and ATO considerations into architecture and engineering decisions.Partner with the Data Engineer and AI Agentic Engineer to ensure data, models, agents, and applications are designed to work together as an operational system.Produce and maintain architecture diagrams, ADRs, technical standards, integration patterns, and concise decision briefs for government leadership.Identify recurring integration and platform problems that can be standardized, automated, or productized through UDS or other reusable capabilities.
Active TS/SCI clearance.Local to the National Capital Region and able to support onsite work at a government facility in Springfield, Virginia; availability for increasing onsite/SCIF interaction as the program scales.8+ years of experience in systems engineering, platform engineering, cloud architecture, DevSecOps, or solution architecture, with demonstrated ownership of complex technical environments.Deep hands-on understanding of Kubernetes and enterprise container platforms, preferably Red Hat OpenShift.Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, GitOps, APIs, networking, identity, secrets, and observability.Familiarity with NIST 800-53, RMF, ATO/C-ATO, zero-trust architecture, software supply-chain security, and continuous authorization.Ability to understand and communicate system architecture across application, platform, AI, data, and security boundaries.Demonstrated experience leading technical decisions in ambiguous, fast-moving environments with multiple engineering teams and technology vendors.Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to brief senior government leaders and collaborate effectively with deeply technical engineers.Ability to serve as a technical point of accountability without becoming a bottleneck; comfortable making informed decisions and escalating when needed.
Experience with AI/ML infrastructure, generative AI, agentic systems, model serving, RAG, or AI platform architecture.Experience with Red Hat OpenShift AI, NVIDIA AI technologies, GitLab, enterprise data platforms, or comparable commercial technologies.Experience integrating multi-vendor platforms where no single vendor owns the complete end-to-end solution.Experience supporting Secret or TS/SCI systems and multi-domain or disconnected/air-gapped deployments.Experience with UDS, Zarf, Pepr, Iron Bank, or similar secure software delivery and platform engineering technologies.Experience creating architecture decision records, reference architectures, technical roadmaps, and executive-level technical briefings.Experience advising government customers on technology strategy, modernization, platform adoption, or enterprise architecture.
The government team has a single, trusted technical advisor who can connect mission goals to architecture and engineering execution.Cross-platform integration issues are identified and resolved before they become schedule or mission blockers.Technical patterns become repeatable rather than bespoke, reducing future engineering effort as the environment expands across classifications and mission use cases.The team can make faster, better-informed technology decisions and move from prototype to operational capability with fewer integration surprises.
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.
