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Salary: USD 102,000 - 138,000 / annual
Defense Unicorns is seeking an Associate Software Engineer to join the UDS Product Engineering team. You will collaborate with engineers, product managers, designers, and end users to build mission-critical software solutions for U.S. Department of Defense and federal customers.
You will grow at the intersection of product development and technical execution, contributing to the design, implementation, testing, and deployment of well-scoped features with guidance from experienced engineers. The UDS Product Engineering team works across a portfolio including:
- UDS Data: open source data platform for all DOD mission sets from enterprise to edge
- UDS Fleet: manage distributed systems across Denied, Disrupted, Intermittent, and Limited (DDIL) and fully airgapped environments
- UDS Image Factory: developer tooling for composing complete, mission-ready system images into deployable artifacts
- UDS Foundation: core platform and tooling powering UDS for Platform Engineers
- UDS Registry: reliably manage and deploy UDS packages to mission environments
- Zarf: open source tool enabling continuous software delivery on disconnected systems
Key responsibilities include delivering well-tested, maintainable code for clearly scoped features; taking ownership of small to medium tasks from implementation through review and release; participating in design discussions and connecting product needs with technical tradeoffs; clarifying requirements and making steady progress with appropriate support; building understanding of systems, users, and mission domains; developing architectural design instincts through pairing with experienced engineers; and contributing to open source projects and internal tooling.
You will also participate in production support and shared on-call practices with guidance, help integrate with existing defense systems, develop technical documentation, and debug issues to improve reliability. As you grow, you will take on larger feature ownership, contribute to cross-functional work, build deeper user and system understanding, and strengthen engineering practices through code review and continuous learning.
Travel expectations: 0-5%. This position requires U.S. citizenship and is a contractor role for the U.S. government.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 1-3 years of software engineering experience
- Working knowledge of Go or another modern programming language
- Foundational understanding of software design, APIs, databases, and cloud environments (AWS, Azure, etc.)
- Exposure to tools or projects focused on software lifecycle and delivery
- Familiarity with Kubernetes concepts, or interest in learning them (Controllers, Operators, CRDs)
- Familiarity with supply chain security concepts, or interest in learning them (SBOMs, signing, scanning, etc.)
- Ability to break down problems, learn quickly, and deliver pragmatic solutions with team support
- Clear communication and collaboration skills, with comfort asking questions and sharing progress
- Experience contributing to open source projects (CNCF, ASF, OpenSSF, etc.) is a plus
