Defense Unicorns

People Operations

• Navigate complex employee situations with sound judgment, ensuring outcomes are fair, timely, and compliant with applicable laws and regulations.
• Support managers in building high-performing teams through guidance on goal-setting, coaching, performance conversations, and development planning.
• Build trusted relationships across the organization, serving as a knowledgeable resource on people matters including employee relations, compensation guidance, and career growth.
• Collaborate with leaders across functions to support workforce planning efforts, including headcount forecasting and partnership with Talent Acquisition on hiring execution.
• Support processes around career planning, learning and development, and overall performance management in coordination with the CPO.
• Cultivate a positive, engaging work environment that reflects Defense Unicorns’ values.
• Lead and continuously improve HR operational processes across the full employee lifecycle, onboarding, offboarding, promotions, transfers, leaves, and everything in between.
• Manage employee data in Rippling with an obsession for accuracy and data integrity across hires, transfers, promotions, and terminations.
• Partner with the team to enhance the onboarding process end-to-end, from recruiter handoff through pre-employment screenings, I-9 verification, orientation, and onboarding survey.
• Support leave administration from preparation through return, in coordination with People Ops, Payroll, and Finance.
• Support employees and managers on HR questions across the full employee lifecycle, escalating complex matters appropriately.
• Ensure HR practices comply with applicable federal, state, and international employment laws; maintain audit-ready documentation and employee records.
• Partner with Legal, Finance, and Security to support compliance initiatives, audits, and tracking of compliance training.
• Identify inefficiencies and implement scalable, standardized processes and workflows across HR functions, globally and domestically.
• Develop, document, and maintain HR SOPs, policies, and internal knowledge bases (Notion, Rippling, and beyond).
• Drive HR operational excellence through automation, system enhancements, and best practices, refining processes to be scalable and AI-ready.
• Actively identify and implement AI-powered tools and workflows to automate repetitive tasks, surface insights faster, and improve the overall employee experience.
• Ensure data integrity, accuracy, and reporting consistency across HR systems (HRIS, ATS) in partnership with the broader People Ops team.
• Lead and execute People Ops projects including process redesigns and cross-functional initiatives, owning timelines, stakeholders, and deliverables.
• Partner with People Ops leadership to prioritize and drive strategic people initiatives; track and report on progress, risks, and outcomes.
• Manage programs across the People Ops team, anything from vendor management to build new workflows to meet emerging business needs.
• Create, implement, and own operational people initiatives such as internal transfer processes, triage workflows, and HRIS process improvements.
• Optimize performance management processes, including HRIS cycles and compensation planning support.
• Analyze HR metrics, including turnover, headcount, engagement, time-to-hire, to identify trends and drive data-informed decisions.
• Build and maintain dashboards and reporting to support business decisions; provide ad hoc insights to the CPO and leadership.
• Dive into People data to answer questions from the business and proactively surface stories the data is telling.
• Provide monthly reporting to People Ops and department leaders on workforce updates and program outcomes.
• Lead and execute People Ops projects including process redesigns and cross-functional initiatives, owning timelines, stakeholders, and deliverables.
• Create, implement, and own operational people initiatives such as internal transfer processes, triage workflows, and HRIS process improvements.

People Operations Lead

Security Engineer

• Develop and execute the enterprise-wide information security strategy, overseeing risk management, governance, compliance, and threat mitigation to protect highly sensitive data, intellectual property, customer environments, and Mission Hero infrastructure.
• Serve as the organization's executive risk authority, the final decision-maker on security posture decisions with enterprise-level impact, and primary advisor to the CEO and senior leadership on cyber risk, emerging threats, and business impact.
• Partner with the CEO, General Counsel, and business development leadership to align security investments with contract requirements, growth objectives, and mission priorities.
• Represent Defense Unicorns' security posture in customer-facing engagements, contract negotiations, government interactions, and partnership discussions.
• Provide executive oversight to the Director of Security Compliance and Director of Information Technology, ensuring cohesion between compliance obligations, IT infrastructure, and security operations.
• Foster a collaborative, mission-first security culture, one that empowers Unicorns to move fast while minimizing risk to the business and our customers.
• Own and execute on a strategy for responsible, cross-cutting AI usage in all functions which enables Unicorns while maintaining a verifiable information security posture.
• Adapt Defense Unicorns application security processes to the AI-native threat hunting realities. Operate and scale bug triage and/or bounty programs that are compatible with Open Source software practices and the trends in responsible disclosure.
• Build and scale defensive security tooling that enables teams to shift-left and safeguard themselves and their work products, from emergent threats including software supply chain security, advanced security hunting, and advanced foreign actors.
• Lead cross-functional efforts to safeguard production infrastructure, cloud platforms, and mission-critical systems against advanced cyber threats, ensuring resilience, regulatory adherence, and alignment with strategic business objectives.
• Build and lead a high-performing security engineering function responsible for securing Defense Unicorns' production environments and customer-facing platforms, including architecture, hardening, threat detection, and defensive controls across cloud, hybrid, and on-premise infrastructure.
• Direct strategy for security architecture and infrastructure protection at scale, setting the technical vision while empowering the Director of IT to implement.
• Champion automation of security processes to reduce mean time to detection and containment, and drive continuous improvement across security operations.
• Serve as the executive sponsor for the Incident Response program, ensuring the function is cross-trained, playbook-ready, and compliant with DFARS 252.204-7012 government notification requirements.
• Own the enterprise Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) framework, setting policy standards, defining residual risk thresholds, and ensuring accountability across organizational units.
• Provide executive sponsorship for the CMMC Level 2 compliance program, maintaining accountability for DFARS 252.204-7012 and 7021 posture, POA&M governance, and C3PAO assessment readiness across all contract vehicles.
• Oversee the third-party risk management (TPRM) program and supply chain risk management aligned to NIST SP 800-161, providing final approval authority on technology investments with compliance implications.
• Serve as the executive interface for government regulatory agencies, C3PAO assessors, and auditors.
• Report on cyber risk posture, program health, and compliance status to senior leadership on a regular cadence.
• Build and sustain a security-aware culture across the organization, one that treats security as mission-enabling, not mission-blocking.
• Lead enterprise security awareness and training programs, ensuring all Unicorns and contractors understand their role in maintaining the company's security posture.
• Communicate complex security concepts clearly to diverse audiences, from engineers and operators to executives, board members, and government stakeholders.
• Advocate for risk-informed decision-making at every level, empowering teams to operate confidently within well-understood guardrails.

People Operations Lead

Chief Information Security Officer