Senior FDE Data Engineer

About Defense Unicorns: Defense Unicorns is a premier, internationally recognized federal technology powerhouse, cloud-native deployment giant, and open-source public sector innovator operating on an absolute mission to protect, automate, and streamline software delivery for the most secure networks across the United States. Composed of innovators, software architects, and military veterans, Defense Unicorns consolidates advanced security pipelines, automated testing matrices, and infrastructure packages to meet the uncompromised security bounds valued by national security mission owners. Their cloud-agnostic tools enable secure, continuous data stack deliveries across commercial and air-gapped systems alike. Driven by a mission-first, high-performance corporate philosophy that prizes speed, user experience, and technical craftsmanship, the company equips high-agency engineers with an uncompromised remote canvas to leverage breakthrough container solutions, manipulate byte-level data layers, and deploy resilient, compliance-hardened data architectures safely across the United States.

Position Overview

We are seeking a highly analytical, detail-obsessed, and systems-minded Senior FDE Data Engineer to join our core centralized Forward-Deployed Engineering division in a full-time remote capacity open to qualified technical developers resident anywhere across the United States. In this highly critical, forward-deployed technical role, you will work shoulder-to-shoulder with mission heroes—the operators, data scientists, and program engineers running real workloads inside real Department of Defense (DoD) environments—taking our data capability from deployable to running in active production under classification bounds. Shifting completely away from traditional isolated backend web programming, minor manual database querying loops, basic dashboard configuration typing, or routine administrative file editing, you will run an active data platform, stream replication, and secure enclave integration laboratory—owning full deployment architectures, setting data governance policies, and spending roughly 20% of your time pairing with and mentoring junior FDE assets to build their technical judgment. This position requires a data infrastructure or cloud-native container veteran with a required active Secret clearance (TS/SCI strongly preferred) who architectures high-throughput lakehouses fluidly natively using Backend data components, programs automated microservice controllers cleanly natively leveraging DevOps pipelines, and commands secure multi-tenant clusters confidently under strict U.S. government IL4/IL5 compliance metrics.

Key Responsibilities

• Forward-Deployed Stack Architecture: Deploy, harden, and manage the UDS Data stack inside highly secure mission environments, configuring storage layers, transaction engines, and database clusters cleanly natively utilizing Backend paradigms.
• Air-Gapped Data Transit Governance: Implement, audit, and optimize automated transit architectures (using Pepr, Lula, and Strimzi/Kafka) to stream data across classification boundaries and manage consistency under DDIL conditions natively leveraging DevOps frameworks.
• Legacy System Interface Integration: Connect core data capabilities to legacy commercial and defense databases, establishing secure integrations with legacy Oracle, SQL Server, flat-file drops, message buses, SOAP/REST endpoints, and Keycloak identity single sign-on (SSO).
• Immutable Platform Packaging: Model, build, and package complete analytical datasets, software objects, and pipeline tools via Zarf to enable seamless continuous delivery inside disconnected nodes.
• Day-2 Operational Maintenance: Own the initial runtime health of deployed clusters, managing capacity modeling, processing backup/restore routines via Velero, tuning performance, and configuring observability pipelines using Vector and Loki.
• Government Accreditation Artifact Generation: Author, organize, and validate strict accreditation evidence—encompassing STIG mappings, cATO documentation, and FIPS validation notes—to enable information system security officers (ISSOs) to authorize system operations.
• High-Signal Feedback Interlock: File precise bug tracking blocks, write postmortems, and propose platform operator enhancements to core R&D squads, acting as the highest-signal field input channel to guide product engineering priorities.
• Junior Developer Cohort Mentorship: Spend roughly 20% of your time pairing with junior Data Engineer FDE assets, executing code design reviews, and helping associate developers foster advanced technical judgment.
• Dynamic Technical Travel: Travel flexibly (10% to 25% of the time) to physical customer sites, SCIFs, and restricted military locations across the country for initial platform standups and technical troubleshooting.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Statutory Citizenship Prerequisite: Continuous active United States Citizenship is required as the employer serves directly as an active contractor for the U.S. Federal Government.
• Active DoD Clearance Prerequisite: An active Department of Defense Security Clearance is strictly required (Minimum Secret with verified capability to obtain TS/SCI; active TS/SCI clearance is highly preferred).
• A minimum of 5 years of verified professional history running advanced data engineering, software development, container architecture management, big data streaming, or technical cloud consulting.
• Expert-tier capability optimizing lakehouse catalogs, designing database schemas, and executing complex data extractions natively utilizing Backend technologies (such as Apache Iceberg, Ceph object stores, Postgres, pgvector, or Spark SQL).
• Practical operational familiarity navigating Kubernetes operators, configuring CRD extensions, and structuring Infrastructure-as-Code scripts natively using DevOps models (specifically Terraform, Pulumi, Flux, or ArgoCD frameworks).
• Demonstrated experience successfully orchestrating high-concurrency stream processors (such as Apache Kafka or Flink) and production data pipeline schedulers (such as Airflow, Dagster, or Argo Workflows).
• Outstanding written, verbal, and scannable technical-documentation communication traits in business-fluent English, enabling uncompromised confidence when briefing both highly technical military operator cells and non-technical administrative stakeholder boards.
• Location Context: Position open to qualified data developers based permanently and resident within the borders of the United States to operate under a remote work-from-home layout with 10% to 25% nationwide on-site travel expectations.

Preferred Strategic Indicators (Nice to Have)

• Prior engineering or security infrastructure history operating inside the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) ecosystem, showing deep familiarity with multi-vendor open-source foundation packages.
• Direct hands-on experience handling log-file parsing, network layer TLS handshakes, data lineage tracking, or programmatic data migrations inside a secure public sector environment.
• A delivery-oriented personal philosophy that favors shipping highly functional, robust code blocks over theoretical architecture designs, coupled with a passion for supporting national security initiatives.

What We Offer

• Vetted National Security Salaried Blueprint: A highly competitive, full-time baseline annual corporate base salary package structured transparently between $148,750 and $201,250 USD, calibrated precisely across all geographic regions to match your backend craftsmanship, data stream velocity, and clearance depth.
• Immediate inclusion into a matching corporate 401(k) retirement plan, supplemented by an impactful company stock options equity stake.
• Profound work-from-home remote parameters offering a 100% remote virtual environment, complete personal schedule autonomy, and zero daily office commuting friction.
• 100% Company-Paid Health Benefits: Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance premiums fully paid by the company for employees, paired with structured Health Savings Accounts (HSA), Life Insurance, and Disability layers.
• Access to elite personal lifestyle and leisure tracks, including a fully funded home office setup budget, completely Flexible Time Off (FTO) parameters, and extensive paid family shutdowns (encompassing full paid weeks for Thanksgiving, and two full paid weeks for Christmas and New Year).
• Continuous technical upscaling tracking, including complete corporate reimbursement for approved engineering trainings, subsciptions, and nationwide technology conferences (inclusive of all travel, lodging, and fees).