Technical Mission Director (FedD235)

The posting, as Defense Unicorns wrote it

Technical Mission Director

Defense Unicorns | Senior Technical Delivery Leadership

Role Description

Defense Unicorns is seeking a senior Technical Mission Director to embed with a government team leading a fast-moving, multi-vendor AI and software modernization effort. This role owns day-to-day execution across government stakeholders, engineering teams, and commercial technology partners, creating the structure and tempo needed to move from prototype to operational capability.

The ideal candidate is an Agile delivery leader with strong technical fluency across modern software, cloud, DevSecOps, AI/ML, data, and platform engineering. They must be credible with engineers and senior government leaders, able to run Scrum in a high-tempo environment, and comfortable turning ambiguity into decisions, priorities, and action.

Responsibilities

• Own day-to-day execution for a multidisciplinary government/industry team and establish the Agile operating rhythm, including Scrum ceremonies, backlog management, sprint planning, reviews, retrospectives, and release planning.
• Coordinate government stakeholders and multiple technology vendors, keeping priorities, dependencies, milestones, and technical risks visible and driving blockers to resolution.
• Lead daily cross-vendor synchronization without allowing meetings to become a substitute for execution; create clear owners, decisions, and next actions.
• Maintain an integrated delivery plan and communicate concise updates on mission outcomes, technical risk, resource needs, decisions, and schedule.
• Work closely with the Technical Solutions Architect and engineering leads across platform, DevSecOps, data, and AI/agentic disciplines to keep execution aligned with the evolving architecture.
• Maintain enough technical depth to recognize integration, security, data, deployment, or architecture issues early and engage the right experts quickly.
• Coordinate the transition from prototype environments into classified operational environments, including readiness, dependencies, and increasing onsite/SCIF collaboration.
• Act as a trusted technical thought partner to government customers: surface risks, frame options, challenge assumptions constructively, and help translate mission needs into executable technical priorities.
• Identify follow-on mission needs, expansion opportunities, and adjacent use cases; understand the customer's acquisition and buying motion and partner with DU growth leadership to shape actionable opportunities.
• Capture lessons learned and repeatable delivery patterns, continuously reducing coordination overhead and improving engineering velocity.
• Build durable customer relationships and represent Defense Unicorns as a technical thought leader rather than simply a delivery resource.

Minimum Experience and Qualifications

• Active TS/SCI clearance.
• Local to the National Capital Region (NCR) and able to support regular onsite work at a government facility in Springf

[…]
oudly support defense and civil agencies across the U.S. government and we work closely with the creators of leading-edge software solutions to deliver value to the mission-owner by improving the security and consumability of commercial software products.

What We Work On

• Kubernetes
• Cloud Environments (AWS/GCP and Azure)
• Infrastructure-as-code (like Terraform/Pulumi)
• Continuous Delivery and automation tooling
• GitOps
• Containers
• CNCF projects and open source products and packages
• Helm/Kustomize-Value Stream Mapping
• Building and improving security delivery
• Building Kubernetes and cloud native applications

Benefits Our Unicorns Enjoy

Health

• Medical/Dental/Vision
• Premiums are 100% Company Paid
• Health Savings Account
• Life Insurance
• Disability Insurance

Financial

• 401k Retirement Plan
• Company Stock Options
• Home Office Budget

Leave

• We offer all full-time Unicorns Flexible Time Off (FTO) plus all Federal Holidays, one week for Thanksgiving, and two weeks for Christmas and New Year’s
• Paid Parental Leave

Learning

• Reimbursement for approved trainings/subscriptions
• Conferences (travel, lodging, and fees)

Don’t have all the preferred experience or qualifications? Studies show that underrepresented groups like women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs if they don't meet every requirement listed.

At Defense Unicorns, we're committed to diversity. If you're enthusiastic about the role but don't match every criteria, we encourage you to apply. You could be the perfect fit for this or another role! Defense Unicorns is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, veteran status, genetic information, union status and/or beliefs, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.

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