Senior Platform Engineer - Army

Senior Platform Engineer

Defense Unicorns is seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to join our Army team, focused on building and operating product-aligned platform capabilities that enable how our software is developed, validated, and experienced.

This role is responsible for creating and owning persistent, always-on environments and integration layers across the UDS platform, including Fleet Management, Edge Management, and system-level components. These environments power internal dogfooding, UX validation, and customer demos, reducing reliance on ad-hoc local setups and enabling scalable, repeatable, and delightful product experiences.

Today, engineers are frequently pulled into demo setup and environment management, creating context switching and slowing product delivery. This role exists to solve that problem by establishing reliable, self-service environments and tighter system integration, allowing engineering teams to focus on building while improving overall product quality and usability.

You will operate at the intersection of platform engineering and product development, ensuring that the systems we build can be continuously exercised, validated, and experienced in real-world conditions. You will be responsible for advocating for a delightful customer product experience as the integrator of the product portfolio.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and operate always-on product environments for customer demos, internal use, and stakeholder access
• Build feature branch and preview environments to support UX and rapid feedback loops
• Enable internal dogfooding through real, long-running deployments of UDS products
• Integrate core system components across Fleet Management, Edge Management, OS, and related services
• Reduce reliance on local environments by creating shared, reproducible infrastructure
• Support pathways toward self-service demo and trial environments
• Improve system reliability by enabling continuous, real-world usage and validation
• Partner with engineering, product, and UX to ensure environments reflect real user scenarios
• Contribute to platform and product architecture decisions where environments and integration are concerned

Travel required: Up to 25%

Required Qualifications

• US citizenship and eligibility to obtain a clearance
• Strong experience in platform engineering, DevOps, or infrastructure-focused software engineering
• Hands-on experience with cloud environments, specifically Azure
• Deep familiarity with Kubernetes and container-based systems
• Experience with Helm, GitOps workflows, and Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform, Pulumi)
• Experience building and operating shared or multi-tenant environments
• Strong understanding of CI/CD and deployment pipelines
• Experience integrating distributed systems across multiple services
• Comfortable working across system boundaries (application, infrastructure, networking)
• Proficiency with Linux/Unix systems
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to operate independently in ambiguous environments
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across engineering, product, and UX

Preferred Qualifications

• Active Secret clearance
• System image/architecture and deployment experience
• Familiarity with the Army, Army Software Factory, or similar DoD software organizations
• Experience with Zarf or UDS

Compensation: $148,750 to $201,250 (full compensation packages are based on candidate experience; ranges are established using national benchmarking data and apply across all geographic locations within the United States)

The listed responsibilities are…