Defense Unicorns

"Do good recklessly." Meet Sam Mayer, one of our 🦄 Software Engineers. Before joining Defense Unicorns, Sam was Active Duty Air Force from 2016-2022, and Air Force Reserves from 2022-2024. While in the Air Force, Sam earned a master's degree from AFIT. He was a software developer at Kessel Run and served as an Offensive Cyberoperator. As an offensive cyberoperator, he was frustrated by the glacial rate of delivery for mission capabilities and the lack of support for in-house efforts to get after the mission. From 2022 to 2024, Sam consulted for VMware Tanzu Labs at the Army Software Factory. He taught soldiers how to code while solving real problems that the Army faced. "For eight years, I experienced the various ways that the DoD struggles to deliver and operate software capabilities across a range of environments. Defense Unicorn's mission to accelerate software delivery, paired with their employee benefits, seemed like a great fit!" - Sam Mayer. Fun Facts About Sam 🚲 Sam is an avid cyclist. He just biked from Washington to Oregon. 🐈 He has two cats. 🍕 If he had to eat one food for the rest of his life, it would be pizza. ✨ We are so happy to have you on our team, Sam! ✨

Let’s talk Pepr. 🦄 “Pepr is on a mission to save K8s from the tyranny of YAML, intimidating glue code, bash scripts, and other makeshift solutions.” – 🦄 Jeff McCoy Pepr lives in the space between code and cluster, turning configuration into something human-readable, secure by default, and automation-friendly. Why contributors love working on it: ⚡ Plain English expressiveness + a strongly typed, full-featured programming language to react to Kubernetes events. 🛡️ Secure by default with sane securityContexts and built-in guardrails. 🛠️ Automates complex configuration and deployments—codifying the hard-earned knowledge of Kubernetes experts into reusable modules. We’ve built a strong foundation, but we need your help to make it even better. If you can: 🛠️ Add a feature 🐛 Fix a bug 📝 Improve the docs 💡 Share feedback You can help make Pepr stronger for every team that depends on it. 💡 Used Pepr before and liked it? Give it a ⭐ on GitHub—it helps more people discover it. 💻 Get started: https://lnkd.in/gYjNi3am Check out the K8s slack channel #pepr https://lnkd.in/gMqw6BcM

When teams come together to truly understand how their work shows up at the edge, where operational realities reshape everything they thought they knew about requirements, that's when real transformation happens. Last week, the Product team for UDS Registry embedded with our forward-deployed engineers for a visit with one of our Mission Heroes. The teams worked shoulder-to-shoulder with mission heroes to understand how UDS drives real operational impact and enables them to solve complex problems. While Product's goal was to gather feedback on UDS Registry and cluster observability, the scope of conversations went far beyond that, encompassing the full spectrum of how software supports the mission. Engagements like this are not about transactional box-checking. They are about listening, learning, and building the trust that forms the foundation of effective, mission-first relationships. When Product sees the mission up close, priorities get refined from "now, next, later" to reflect what's actually needed in the field. User stories transform from hypothetical scenarios into operational realities. Shoutout to the Unicorns who made it happen: Adam Martelon, Daniel Donaldson, Chris Toth, Michael Borland, Colin Lodter, Mitchell Murphy & Antonio Escalera. Your presence on the ground continues to build the foundation that makes mission-first software possible. This is how we build better software. This is how we make software a strategic deterrent. This is what Mission First looks like.

Rebuilding artifacts inside a secure network isn’t easy, especially when you’re dealing with hundreds of repos, multiple languages, and strict compliance requirements. #Zarf makes it simple. We used it to package everything: source, dependencies, compilers, and build scripts. The result? A reproducible Zarf package that anyone can deploy or rebuild inside the airgap. Runtime and build containers, side by side. No drift. No rework. Just traceable, secure software delivery that scales. So ask yourself this the next time you’re setting up a pipeline for a secure environment: Will it still work when everything has to run inside the airgap? Check out Bryan Finster’s blog on Automating Rebuildable Secure Pipelines with Zarf: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gtUFKe75

UDS Core v0.48.0 “Variegated Vaquita” is here! 🐬 This release includes powerful new features, security-focused policies, and some breaking changes. Breaking Changes 💥 • Introduction of 𝙲𝚕𝚞𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛𝙲𝚘𝚗𝚏𝚒𝚐— some 𝚞𝚍𝚜-𝚘𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚘𝚛-𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚏𝚒𝚐 values are no longer valid → [See migration guidance in full release notes] New Features ✨ • Support for pre-existing Keycloak secrets • Istio annotation warnings (🚨 will block in future releases — exemptions required) • Root/apex domain support in Package CRs • Grafana dashboards for Keycloak metrics & troubleshooting • Ambient Authservice application support →UDS Core now supports Authservice-protected applications while in ambient mode. Dependency Updates 🔧 → Grafana 12.1.0 → Keycloak 26.3.2 → Metrics-Server 0.8.0 → Neuvector 5.4.5 → Prometheus 3.5.0 → Loki 3.5.3 → Pepr 0.52.2 Check out the full release notes here. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gxTWdcen

Happy Birthday to the U.S. Coast Guard! ⚓🎂 Since 1790, the U.S. Coast Guard has stood watch over our nation's waters, protecting lives, securing maritime borders, and responding at a moment's notice. Today, we recognize the legacy of service carried by generations of Coast Guard, past and present, who show up every day with quiet strength and unwavering commitment. Thank you for being Always Ready.

"Be curious, not judgmental." - Ted Lasso. Meet Will Walker, one of our Senior Platform Engineers. Before joining Defense Unicorns, Will led DevSecOps efforts at the 90th Cyberspace Operations Squadron in support of capabilities development for United States Cyber Command. There, he partnered with development teams to encourage the adoption of automated functional testing and CI/CD. Will also helped lead the Innovation Team in creating full-stack Kubernetes apps for internal tooling used by developers. "Software is nothing without delivery. You could make the most amazing tool in the world, but if it never gets used, it doesn't matter. I love that Defense Unicorns helps get tools in the hands of our Mission Heroes anytime, anywhere." - Will Walker. Fun Facts About Will 🚶➡️ He once walked into an Air Force unit while wearing civilian clothes and convinced them to give him an iPad. 🎼 He has released music on Apple Music. 💻 He really wants to try the macOS 26 beta. ✨ We are so happy to have you on our team, Will! ✨

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky – Michael Scott – You, after seeing this post 🦄 We’re hiring. 👉 https://lnkd.in/gKXXJzKa

We have officially surpassed 100 mission apps in production on UDS! We are proud to share that Defense Unicorns now supports 100+ mission apps powering real-world DoD missions worldwide. 🦄🌍 Defense Unicorns is on a mission to make software a strategic deterrent. The best way to get there? Put trusted software in the hands of mission teams exactly when and where they need it. 100+ production deployments are live today across the Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and our trusted mission partners —proving that modern software can thrive in the fight. This is a HUGE milestone for us as a company, and it would not be possible without our mission heroes and world-class forward-deployed engineers who make the mission happen every single day! 👉 You can find many of the unclassified apps that we support in the Airgap Store, powered by UDS Registry. Link in comments. 👇

What happens when you put a sharp mission-focused SME, a whiteboard, and a room full of warfighters? You get #SigmaBlox, an immersive 5-day bootcamp where teams come to sharpen strategies, forge trust, and learn directly from those who live the mission every day. Rebecca Lively is representing Defense Unicorns this week, not just to share, but to listen. To better understand what warfighters in INDOPACOM actually need, and how tools like UDS can prove or improve product-market fit in high-stakes, disconnected environments. This isn’t talk. It’s action. SigmaBlox brings together government decision makers, operators, and industry in the same room to solve real problems, then accelerates outcomes through funding, contracts, and policy. We’re proud to have Rebecca in the room helping shape that future. Because when you get close to the mission, everything gets clearer. Check it out here. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gKbNd4it