<h1><strong>Role Description:</strong></h1> <p>As a Team Lead at Defense Unicorns, you will serve as the technical backbone of our hackathon program: setting the architecture, integration patterns, and technical guardrails every event runs on. You'll work across the team to design, plan, and execute large-scale, community-facing hackathon events throughout the year, moving fluidly between technical strategy and energizing a room full of mission heroes, operators, and builders.</p> <p>You'll evaluate and integrate the right mix of partner technologies (cloud providers, Defense Unicorns' own platform and tooling, and the broader defense vendor ecosystem) into a durable reference architecture that works within controlled environments. You'll serve as a credible technical voice with government stakeholders and industry partners, ensuring every hackathon is built on a foundation that sets participants up to succeed and produces outcomes that can transition to production.</p> <h1><strong>Responsibilities</strong></h1> <p><strong>Technical Direction and Architecture</strong></p> <ul> <li>Set and own the overall technical direction for each hackathon, ensuring solutions are grounded in UDS and Defense Unicorns' platform and tooling philosophy</li> <li>Evaluate and integrate partner technologies and third-party tools to ensure broad compatibility across the diverse technology stacks participants bring</li> <li>Define technical guardrails, reference architectures, and integration patterns that guide participant teams toward durable, deployable outcomes</li> <li>Identify technical risks early and develop mitigation strategies in partnership with the Mission Manager </li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Stakeholder Engagement</strong></p> <ul> <li>Serve as a technical voice in external engagements with government mission heroes, industry partners, and hackathon participants</li> <li>Translate complex technical capabilities into compelling narratives that communicate mission impact and drive stakeholder buy-in</li> <li>Build enthusiasm and credibility with a wide range of audiences, from senior government decision-makers to individual contributors on participant teams</li> <li>Support the Mission Manager in cultivating and sustaining relationships across the DoW innovation ecosystem </li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Hackathon Execution</strong></p> <ul> <li>Partner closely with our team, our partners, and the Mission Heroes throughout the full event lifecycle, from planning through post-event follow-up</li> <li>Design and deliver technical programming, workshops, and participant enablement content that set teams up for success</li> <li>Capture technical outcomes and ensure post-event documentation supports continuity and reuse </li> </ul> <h1><strong>Required Qualifications:</strong></h1> <ul> <li>Strong hands-on technical background, with demonstrated experience designing and building software systems in complex, multi-technology environments</li> <li>Hands-on experience with UDS or similar platform abstraction and deployment frameworks</li> <li>Experience engaging directly with government or defense stakeholders in a technical capacity, including translating technical concepts for non-technical audiences</li> <li>Comfort with presales or customer-facing roles that blend technical credibility with the ability to generate excitement and communicate value</li> <li>Demonstrated understanding of software delivery and platform engineering practices for air-gapped environments, including offline package management, artifact distribution, and secure update mechanisms.</li> </ul> <h1><strong>Preferred Qualifications:</strong></h1> <ul> <li>Familiarity with the DoW innovation ecosystem, including programs, procurement, and mission priorities</li> <li>Experience supporting or participating in hackathons, integration events, or innovation sprints in a technical leadership capacity</li> <li>Ability to operate in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and build structure where none exists</li> <li>Track record of delivering technical solutions that outlast the event or sprint that created them</li> </ul> <h3><strong>Travel</strong></h3> <p>Travel is expected multiple times per year to support event execution and stakeholder engagement, primarily within the continental United States, but occasionally OCONUS as required.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>The listed responsibilities are not exhaustive and additional responsibilities may be assigned based on the evolving needs of the organization. We are seeking a dynamic individual who is able to adapt and take on new responsibilities as they arise.</em></strong></p><div class="content-pay-transparency"><div class="pay-input"><div class="description"><p>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. </p></div><div class="title">Remote - USA</div><div class="pay-range"><span>$148,750</span><span class="divider">—</span><span>$201,250 USD</span></div></div></div><div class="content-conclusion"><h3>Who We Are</h3> <p>Defense Unicorns delivers mission value by streamlining softw