Senior Software Engineer - Open Source (RD217)

The role

You will build, maintain, and steward open source products and cloud native software. You will collaborate with product managers, designers, engineers, community contributors, and end users.

What you will do

• Work with internal engineers and open source community contributors on features, bug fixes, reviews, and releases
• Engage with open source communities, industry partners, and standards bodies
• Amplify the voice of projects by delivering end-user experience and collaborating on case studies, blogs, or presentations
• Identify and resolve ambiguity across product requirements, community needs, and upstream project constraints
• Build and integrate secure, interoperable cloud native software for defense environments
• Own architecture decisions and ensure technical quality across open source codebases, APIs, and contributor workflows
• Develop comprehensive documentation including design proposals, contribution guides, user documentation, and maintenance guides
• Stay abreast of emerging cloud native, open source, and secure software supply chain technologies
• Provide technical mentorship and elevate engineering standards across the team
• Influence product direction through understanding of user needs and system constraints

Required qualifications

• Strong Golang experience
• Willingness to learn TypeScript
• Ability to work proactively in a remote work environment

Nice to have

• 5+ years experience with software engineering
• Experience building or maintaining open source software tools, especially in cloud native, software lifecycle, or software supply chain domains
• Interest in learning TypeScript, and contributing across additional modern languages such as Rust
• Strong understanding of system design, library and software APIs, Kubernetes, and cloud architecture (e.g., AWS, Azure)
• Excited to assess intricate problems, propose solutions, and implement them effectively
• Experience contributing to open source projects and participating in open source communities
• Involvement with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), Apache Software Foundation (ASF), Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), or similar communities
• Familiar with core Kubernetes concepts, including but not limited to controllers, operators, and CRDs
• Strong communication and collaboration skills

Benefits

• Medical/Dental/Vision
• Premiums are 100% Company Paid
• Health Savings Account
• Life Insurance
• Disability Insurance
• 401k Retirement Plan
• Company Stock Options
• Home Office Budget
• Flexible Time Off (FTO)
• Federal Holidays
• One week for Thanksgiving
• Two weeks for Christmas and New Year’s

About the company

Defense Unicorns delivers mission value by streamlining software delivery so their customers can focus on the most important challenges. They create and deliver secure solutions for continuous software integration and delivery.