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Salary: USD 178,500 - 241,500 / annual
Defense Unicorns is seeking an experienced Senior Engineering Manager to lead a team of engineers building airgap-native software solutions integrated with UDS (Unicorn Delivery Service) to accelerate Authority to Operate (ATO) processes for national defense customers.
You will manage and mentor a distributed engineering team, owning deliverables for scalable, highly-available, and secure products. Key responsibilities include leading team development and career growth, collaborating with Product and Growth teams to align engineering roadmaps with company objectives, ensuring timely delivery of customer-focused solutions, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement in code quality and architecture.
You will facilitate communication between customers and engineers, manage technical specifications and project timelines, and stay current with emerging technologies and industry trends. The role requires 10-25% travel.
Required qualifications: 6+ years of industry experience in platform and infrastructure development; 2+ years managing engineering teams in remote/distributed environments; strong technical background in software engineering with deep experience architecting scalable solutions on AWS, GCP, or Azure; proficiency with Kubernetes, DevOps principles, and CI/CD pipelines; excellent leadership and communication skills; ability to solve complex technical problems alongside your team.
Highly desirable: familiarity with Zarf and the UDS ecosystem, understanding of airgapped systems and edge device constraints, open-source contributions, and Android development experience. This is a mission-driven role supporting federal customers who rely on secure, continuous software delivery.
