Senior Software Engineer - Open Source (RD217)

Defense Unicorns delivers secure, cloud-native software solutions for mission-focused customers. The company is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to build, maintain, and steward open source products while collaborating with internal teams, contributors, users, and ecosystem partners. The role focuses on cloud-native software development, community engagement, architecture, documentation, technical mentorship, and improving secure software delivery for defense environments.

Responsibilities:

• Work with internal engineers and open source community contributors on features, bug fixes, reviews, and releases through clear communication, collaboration, and responsible stewardship
• Engage with open source communities, industry partners, and standards bodies via common platforms (e.g., Slack, GitHub, etc.) to help move our projects and their upstream ecosystems forward, including facilitating community meetings with our internal and external users
• Amplify the voice of our projects within the ecosystem by delivering a mission-focused end-user experience and collaborating with users to produce case studies, blogs, or conference presentations
• Proactively identify and resolve ambiguity across product requirements, community needs, and upstream project constraints
• Comfortable working proactively, managing time efficiently, and thriving in a vibrant remote work environment ✨🦄
• Build and integrate secure, interoperable cloud native software for defense environments while contributing improvements back to relevant open source projects where appropriate
• 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 to inform product enhancements and ecosystem contributions
• Provide technical mentorship and elevate engineering standards across the team
• Influence product direction through deep understanding of user needs and system constraints

Requirements:

• 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
• Proficient in Go, with 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 is a huge plus
• Familiar with core Kubernetes concepts, including but not limited to controllers, operators, and CRDs
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, comfortable conveying technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences