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Salary: USD 145,000 - 185,000 / annual
Defense Unicorns is seeking a Mission Director to lead full-lifecycle business development and program execution for Army Aviation customers, specifically targeting PAE Maneuver Air. This is a quota-carrying role combining business development, program leadership, and customer relationship ownership.
You will identify and shape new Army Aviation opportunities, build trusted relationships with customers and stakeholders, and lead opportunities from discovery through contract award. Post-award, you own the contract lifecycle including cost, schedule, performance, staffing, margin, and customer satisfaction. As your portfolio grows, you will transition into a leadership role managing program managers and delivery leaders while retaining accountability for portfolio outcomes.
Key responsibilities include:
- Building net-new Army Aviation business and maintaining a diversified, growing portfolio against quota
- Defining customer problems and shaping solutions using Defense Unicorns' cloud-native software delivery products
- Leading proposals, negotiations, and contract awards
- Serving as program leader for new contracts, managing delivery risks and scope changes
- Building and leading teams required to execute contracts, scaling from individual contributor to portfolio leader
- Maintaining active pipeline, identifying follow-on work, expansions, and adjacent opportunities
- Owning customer retention, portfolio growth, and gross margin
Defense Unicorns delivers secure solutions for continuous software integration and delivery, specializing in Kubernetes, cloud environments, infrastructure-as-code, DevSecOps, and modern software delivery. The company serves mission-focused leaders across defense and civil agencies.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Experience within Army Aviation or closely related defense environment
- Strong understanding of domain culture, mission, stakeholders, and terminology
- Experience in military operations, government program management, acquisition, contracting, business development, or defense industry program leadership
- Working knowledge of federal acquisition, contract vehicles, acquisition strategies, and contract negotiations
- Strong commercial judgment and comfort owning revenue-generating activities
- Demonstrated ability to lead teams and hold accountability for outcomes
- Willingness to operate across business development, contracting, staffing, and execution, personally driving critical work while building teams to scale
- Comfort operating with ambiguity and creating paths forward without predefined playbooks
- Technical fluency sufficient to understand and communicate Defense Unicorns products, cloud-native technologies, DevSecOps, Kubernetes, and modern software delivery concepts
- Candidates located near major Army hubs preferred
- Ability to travel approximately 25-40%
