Senior Mission Manager

EMPLOYER IS A CONTRACTOR FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. THIS POSITION WILL REQUIRE U.S. CITIZENSHIP AND ACTIVE SECRET CLEARANCE.Role Description:This role works within Defense Unicorns' Army Domain and serves as a mission-focused technical leader responsible for driving customer success, delivery execution, and adoption of Defense Unicorns solutions across Army mission portfolios.The Senior Mission Manager works closely with Army customers, engineering teams, and senior mission leaders to ensure successful delivery of secure software and platform capabilities. This individual owns the translation of mission requirements into actionable work, drives execution across cross-functional teams, and serves as a trusted technical advisor to customers throughout the delivery lifecycle.This role is ideal for individuals with significant operational military experience, technical solution delivery experience, or customer-facing engineering backgrounds who can own mission outcomes independently and help shape the direction of Army delivery efforts.Key Responsibilities:Develop and maintain deep expertise in Defense Unicorns products and capabilities, including UDS, Fleet, Zarf, and supporting platform technologiesTranslate customer requirements, mission needs, and operational challenges into actionable work items and delivery plansOwn mission outcomes and delivery execution with minimal oversightManage backlog management, sprint planning, prioritization, and delivery tracking activitiesWork directly with Army stakeholders to understand mission objectives, gather requirements, and communicate progressEffectively communicate technical concepts and solution capabilities to both technical and non-technical audiencesDrive identification of customer challenges, future capability needs, and opportunities for expanded supportMonitor delivery risks, dependencies, and issues while coordinating mitigation plansPartner with technical leads, architects, and engineers to ensure solutions align with customer needs and engineering best practicesContribute technical input to proposals, technical responses, white papers, and ROM development effortsSupport onboarding and mentoring of team membersParticipate in hiring activities, candidate interviews, and team-building effortsServe as a trusted technical advisor to customers throughout the delivery lifecycleRequired Qualifications:Hands-on experience with Kubernetes in production environments (Azure AKS, AWS EKS, or on-prem distributions such as RKE2, K3s, or OpenShift)Experience with Helm for packaging and deploying containerized applicationsWorking knowledge of GitOps workflows and Infrastructure-as-Code tools (Terraform, OpenTofu)Familiarity with hybrid cloud architectures, including networking, RBAC, and storage for cloud and on-prem clustersUnderstanding of DevSecOps/DevOps principles and CI/CD pipelines (GitLab or GitHub)Experience working with or supporting the U.S. Army, Army Software Factory, or similar DoD software organizationsStrong communication skills and effectiveness in a fully remote team environmentSelf-motivated and able to work independently with minimal supervisionWillingness to travel as needed for on-site training and supportPreferred Qualifications:Experience with system image creation, architecture design, and deployment pipelinesExperience with Zarf, UDS, or similar air-gapped deployment toolingComfortable serving as a primary customer-facing technical resource, including production support and platform guidanceDoD IAT Level II certification (such as Security+)The listed responsibilities are not exhaustive and additional responsibilities may be assigned based on the evolving needs of the organization. We are seeking a dynamic individual who is able to adapt and take on new responsibilities as they arise.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.$142,375 - $192,625 USDWho We AreDefense 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.What We DoWe 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 en