Associate Engineer - Data Platform

Role Description

Defense Unicorns is seeking an Associate Engineer who is energized by learning, ready to get their hands dirty, and genuinely motivated by knowing that software actually works — not just that it deploys. This is a role for someone early in their career who wants to grow quickly in a rigorous technical environment and contribute to systems that matter.

You will own real work from day one: packaging and deploying open source software, writing test suites that give the team confidence to ship, and building the tooling and documentation that make complex distributed systems understandable and demonstrable. You will work directly with other engineers and product leaders who will invest in your growth. If you find satisfaction in breaking things on purpose, documenting what you find, and making sure the next person can reproduce it — this role is a strong fit.

Responsibilities

• Write and maintain test suites — integration, end-to-end, and regression — that give the team confidence to ship
• Write automated tests and test documentation that any engineer can reproduce and act on
• Package and deploy open source software components in Kubernetes environments
• Build and maintain seed data tooling and scripts that make the platform demonstrable from scratch
• Contribute to internal tooling, dashboards, and documentation
• Write clear bug reports and reproduction steps that the team can act on immediately
• Participate actively in code review, seeking feedback, and growing your technical judgment

Travel Expectations/Requirements

Travel: 10-20%, primarily for customer engagements and company gatherings.

What You'll Work On

• Test suites and validation tooling that give the team confidence to ship a new capability
• Deployment automation and tooling that let any engineer stand up the full platform from scratch
• Real bug reports and edge case documentation that directly accelerate how quickly other engineers can identify and resolve issues
• Runbooks and demo scripts that make a complex distributed system legible to anyone picking it up for the first time

Required Qualifications

• Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related technical field — or equivalent demonstrated hands-on technical ability
• Active and effective user of AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude, Cursor, or similar) — you know how to prompt well, validate output, and catch when the model is wrong
• An orientation toward testing and validation — you find satisfaction in knowing that something works, not just that it runs; you break things intentionally and document what you find
• U.S. citizenship and the ability to obtain a security clearance

Preferred Experience and Qualifications

• Comfort with at least one programming language — Python, Go, TypeScript, or similar; willingness to learn what the stack requires
• Genuine curiosity about how distributed systems work and fail — you want to understand the system, not just run scripts against it
• Comfort with command-line tooling and Linux environments
• Ability to write clearly: bug reports, documentation, and runbooks that another engineer can follow
• Comfortable working asynchronously in a remote environment ✨🦄

Amazing To Haves

• Any exposure to Kubernetes — even running a local cluster (k3s, k0s, minikube) counts
• Familiarity with containerization (Docker, container images)
• Experience with any database — relational (Postgres, MySQL), document (MongoDB), key-value (Redis), or similar
• Coursework or personal projects involving data, AI, or machine learning
• Interest in defense, national security software, or government technology
• Contributions to open source projects, even small ones

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.