Senior AI Software Engineer (RD271)

Defense Unicorns

About The Position

Defense Unicorns is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join its Ark team. Ark is an AI-native software development product designed to help Mission Heroes create, package, and deliver secure applications into mission environments. It bridges software creation and deployment by combining AI-driven workflows with UDS tooling to automate application development, packaging, validation, and delivery preparation. In this role, you will help shape the technical direction of Ark and own the design and delivery of complex capabilities. You will work at the intersection of AI, software engineering, and secure software delivery, addressing challenges such as AI agent orchestration, isolated development environments, automated validation, and integrating AI capabilities with deterministic systems. You will collaborate with Engineering, Product, UX, and Mission Heroes to translate customer challenges into intuitive, reliable solutions, influence architecture decisions, and help establish engineering practices as the product evolves. The employer is a contractor for the U.S. Government, and U.S. citizenship is required. Travel expectations are 0–5%.

Requirements

At least 5 years of professional software engineering experience.
Strong proficiency in a modern programming language; Go and TypeScript are preferred.
Experience designing, building, and operating production software products.
Experience integrating LLMs, AI agents, or AI-powered capabilities into software applications.
Strong understanding of APIs, distributed systems, asynchronous workflows, and application architecture.
Experience with Kubernetes, containers, and cloud-native application development.
Experience building reliable, testable systems with automated validation and CI/CD pipelines.
Ability to navigate ambiguity, evaluate technical tradeoffs, and independently deliver complex solutions.
Strong communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills.
U.S. citizenship is required.

Nice To Haves

Experience building AI agent orchestration systems, coding agents, or AI-powered developer tools.
Familiarity with LLM evaluation, tool calling, MCP, and agent execution frameworks.
Experience with secure sandboxing, isolated execution environments, or Kata Containers.
Experience building developer platforms, CLIs, or software development automation.
Familiarity with Zarf, Helm, Kubernetes operators, or software packaging workflows.
Experience with software supply chain security, artifact validation, and deployment automation.
Experience developing software for air-gapped, regulated, or restricted environments.
Contributions to open-source projects or developer tooling.

Responsibilities

Build AI-driven workflows that help users create, package, validate, and maintain mission applications.
Develop agent orchestration capabilities that combine AI reasoning with deterministic tooling, validation, and human oversight.
Create secure, isolated development environments for executing AI agents and building software.
Integrate UDS packaging, Kubernetes, and software delivery tooling into automated development workflows.
Build systems that manage persistent application state, development workflows, and asynchronous execution.
Develop automated testing and validation capabilities to ensure generated software and UDS packages are secure and deployable.
Collaborate with Product, UX, and Mission Heroes to make complex software development and delivery challenges into intuitive product experiences.
Own the design, implementation, testing, and delivery of complex software features and systems.
Drive pragmatic technical decisions and contribute to architecture across product components.
Proactively identify and resolve ambiguity in collaboration with Product, UX, and Mission Heroes.
Debug complex issues across Kubernetes, virtualization, storage, networking, and operating systems.
Improve software reliability, security, performance, observability, and maintainability.
Review code, mentor teammates, and help establish strong engineering practices.
Document technical decisions, communicate clearly, and collaborate effectively across teams.
Adapt to evolving organizational needs and take on additional responsibilities as assigned.