Forward Deployed AI Engineer
$123k - $201k USD
EMPLOYER IS A CONTRACTOR FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. THIS POSITION REQUIRES U.S. CITIZENSHIP.
About Defense Unicorns
Defense Unicorns is veteran-founded and mission-driven. The company’s vision is to advance freedom and independence globally by transforming how the U.S. Department of War builds, buys, delivers, and sustains software. We deliver secure, scalable software and AI solutions that function in cloud, on-prem, and tactical edge / air-gapped environments — making software a strategic deterrent for warfighters.
In this role you will join a team building the backbone of modern defense software delivery — helping ensure warfighters can deploy the latest capabilities rapidly, securely, and reliably.
What You’ll Do
- Embed with strategic customers as a technical partner, working from problem discovery to solution implementation and customer adoption.
- Architect, build, deploy, and operate agentic Generative AI systems: APIs, data processing ETL pipelines, integration layers, Retrieval Augmented Generation, and context engineering.
- Work in cloud, on-prem, and edge/air-gapped environments to ensure software can run where the mission demands.
- Prototype and deploy systems leveraging the core products and design patterns of the Unicorn Delivery Service (UDS); bring back insights from the field for continuous product improvement .
- Scope, sequence, and lead delivery of solutions: define living roadmaps, set priorities, trade off speed vs quality vs scope, work across internal teams and customer stakeholders to drive clarity and remove blockers early.
- Codify reusable patterns for mission environments: build tools, internal frameworks, playbooks so future deployments are faster, safer, and repeatable.
- Act as the technical face to customer leadership: communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, build trust, manage expectations, and ensure successful scale and mission adoption. This is a customer-facing role.
- Ability and interest to travel up to 25%, as needed to client sites, but flexible based on personal preferences.
What You’ll Bring
- 3+ years of engineering or technical deployment experience (backend or full-stack), ideally in customer-facing or government environments (DoD, intelligence, public sector) or analogous high-assurance contexts.
- Strong backend engineering skills: production-grade code in Python or TypeScript; deep familiarity with designing services, APIs, data pipelines, integrations, and backend frameworks.
- Familiarity with LLMs or generative AI systems — be able to explain the fundamentals of Context Engineering and understand how model behavior connects to product/mission experience, and how AI capabilities integrate into larger system architectures.
- Strong ability to work in ambiguity: define scope, sequence work, make trade-offs between speed, quality, and scope; remove blockers; deliver under pressure in dynamic mission-driven settings.
- Excellent communication skills: able to translate complex technical details into clear messaging for non-technical stakeholders; work cross-functionally; build relationships with customers and internal teams.
- Mission-oriented mindset. Have an understanding that our work is supporting the defense and freedom of the nation.
- U.S. Citizenship required; active TS/SCI clearance or eligibility strongly preferred.
Nice to Have
- Experience with deploying applications on Kubernetes inside of air-gapped or secure environments.
- Experience with Information Retrieval fundamentals including knowledge of keyword and vector based search, document parsing and chunking, document reranking, and SQL/NoSQL search engines.
- Experience with developing, executing, and maintaining LLM evaluations.
- Experience with open source LLM or SLM models (Llama3, Mixtral, Gemma, Phi) including inference frameworks, structured output, fine-tuning, and model architecture reconfiguration.
Why This Role Matters
As a Forward Deployed AI Engineer at Defense Unicorns, you will directly contribute to accelerating warfighter capability. By working at the intersection of backend software engineering, secure delivery platforms, and mission-driven deployments, you’ll help deliver software updates in minutes instead of months — enabling operational advantage, agility, and freedom for the nation. You will not just build code — you’ll deploy impact where it matters most.
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.
Remote - USA
$123,250—$201,250 USD
Who We Are
Defense 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 Do
We 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 enterprise customers inside and outside the federal market buy and integrate software more easily.
Who We Serve
Defense Unicorns’ customers are mission-focused leaders across public and private enterprises. We proudly 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 Reimbursement 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.