Director of Federal Operations

Role Overview

Defense Unicorns is seeking a senior Federal enablement leader to serve as a high-leverage partner to the Federal organization. This person will help the Federal team scale with more consistency, stronger operating rhythms, better deal inspection, and clearer execution across priority work.

This role sits close to Federal leadership and works across Domain teams, Sales, Product, Engineering, Delivery, Finance, and Operations. It is designed for a senior operator who can turn ambiguity into structure, keep important work moving, and help leaders stay focused on customers, pipeline creation, and strategic growth.

The right candidate will bring judgment, follow-through, and the ability to build lightweight systems that improve execution without slowing down a fast-moving Federal business.

Key Responsibilities

Federal Enablement & Operating Cadence

• Support Federal-specific enablement needs in partnership with Sales Enablement and Sales Operations.
• Translate company-wide sales processes, tools, onboarding, and reporting into clear Federal expectations and execution rhythms.
• Build and maintain operating cadences that help Federal leaders, Domain Directors, Mission Directors, and cross-functional partners stay focused, accountable, and aligned.
• Inspect weekly reporting, identify gaps or risks, and follow up on action items until they are closed.
• Track commitments from pipeline reviews, leadership discussions, customer meetings, and internal deal reviews.
• Standardize how Federal teams prepare, report, escalate, and execute while keeping process practical and useful.

Onboarding Support

• Identify and fill Federal-specific onboarding gaps for new Federal hires.
• Help new team members understand Defense Unicorns' Federal motion, domain priorities, customer engagement model, deal expectations, and internal ways of working.
• Create and refine Federal-specific onboarding materials, templates, examples, and expectations that complement company-wide onboarding.
• Partner with Sales Enablement, Sales Operations, Domain Directors, and Mission Directors to help new Federal hires ramp faster and with clearer expectations.
• Turn recurring points of confusion into clearer guidance, training, or operating materials.

Deal Inspection & Pipeline Accountability

• Inspect priority deals to ensure next steps, risks, owners, pricing, procurement path, and customer alignment are clear.
• Review PWIN assumptions and ensure they are accurate, complete, and grounded in the real customer situation.
• Ask hard questions as opportunities move through stages so deals progress based on strong evidence and clear ownership.
• Support pipeline health across current-quarter execution and future-quarter creation.
• Partner with Mission Directors and Domain Directors to identify stuck deals, weak spots, missing artifacts, and areas requiring leadership support.
• Help Federal leadership maintain a clear view of what is real, what is at risk, and what needs action.

Strategic Projects & Surge Support

• Lead or support strategic Federal projects that require focused execution and cross-functional coordination.
• Provide surge support on priority opportunities where additional senior execution capacity is needed.
• Support strategic pricing efforts in partnership with Sales, Finance, Product, and Delivery.
• Build or refine artifacts needed for key deals, executive conversations, customer strategy, internal decision-making, and leadership alignment.
• Step into ambiguous, high-priority work and turn it into something actionable.

What Success Looks Like

• Federal leaders have more bandwidth for strategy, customer engagement, and net-new pipeline creation.
• Federal-specific onboarding gaps are addressed in partnership with the broader enablement team.
• New Federal hires ramp faster and with more clarity on the Federal motion.
• Weekly reporting is tighter, action items are tracked, and follow-through improves.
• Priority deals are better inspected before close, with clearer risks, next steps, PWIN, pricing, and ownership.
• Pipeline health is visible across near-term revenue and future-quarter growth.
• Strategic projects move faster because a senior operator is driving them to completion.
• Domain and Mission leaders view this person as a force multiplier, not an added layer of process.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a senior doer: someone who can operate in ambiguity, build structure without over-processing, and earn trust quickly across teams. Federal experience is helpful but not required. What matters most is judgment, horsepower, follow-through, and the ability to work across GTM, Product, Sales, Delivery, and Operations.

This person should be comfortable inspecting deals, asking direct questions, tracking details, supporting senior leaders, and jumping into strategic work without needing a perfectly defined lane. They should bring enough experience to be leaned on by the Federal team while staying low-ego, collaborative, and practical.

Required Capabilities

• Strong operator with excellent follow-through and attention to detail.
• Able to create structure in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
• Comfortable holding senior teammates accountable in a direct but collaborative way.
• Strong business judgment across sales, GTM, delivery, product, and customer-facing work.
• Able to inspect pipeline, deal quality, PWIN, stage progression, risks, and next steps.
• Strong written and verbal communicator.
• High trust, low ego, and willing to jump into the work that matters most.
• Comfortable working cross-functionally with Sales Enablement, Sales Operations, Delivery, Engineering, Product, and Finance.
• Able to balance standardization with the flexibility required in complex Federal deals.

Role Positioning

This role lives inside the Federal organization as an extension of Federal leadership bandwidth. It complements the broader Sales Enablement, Sales Operations, and RevOps motions while filling the Federal-specific gaps that naturally emerge in a complex, domain-led business: onboarding context, deal inspection, pipeline accountability, and strategic project execution.

The right person will help the Federal team scale without slowing it down.

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

$200,000—$250,000 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 Savings 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.

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