Platform Engineer

Defense Unicorns

23h•Remote

About The Position

Defense Unicorns is seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to join our Fleet 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 of the suite of products, 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 product capabilities 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.

Requirements

U.S. Citizenship required
Strong experience in platform engineering, DevOps, or infrastructure-focused software engineering
Deep familiarity with Kubernetes and container-based systems
Experience building and operating shared or multi-tenant environments
Proficiency with infrastructure as code (e.g., Terraform, Pulumi, etc.)
Strong understanding of CI/CD, GitOps, 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

Responsibilities

Designing and operating always-on product environments for customer demos, internal use, and stakeholder access
Building feature branch / preview environments to support UX and rapid feedback loops
Enabling internal dogfooding through real, long-running deployments of UDS products
Integrating core system components across Fleet Management, Edge Management, OS, and related services
Reducing reliance on local environments by creating shared, reproducible infrastructure
Supporting pathways toward self-service demo and trial environments
Improving system reliability by enabling continuous, real-world usage and validation
Partnering with engineering, product, and UX to ensure environments reflect real user scenarios
Design, build, and maintain scalable platform environments that support development, testing, and demos
Own the reliability and usability of shared environments used across the team
Collaborate closely with software engineers to integrate platform and product components
Identify and close gaps in system integration across services and infrastructure layers
Build and maintain infrastructure as code for reproducible environments
Improve developer experience by reducing friction in environment setup and usage
Support product demos and stakeholder access through stable, well-understood systems
Contribute to platform and product architecture decisions where environments and integration are concerned