Account Executive — Autonomous Systems
defenseunicorns
San Francisco and Los Angeles CA
Posted Aug 20, 2026
- Full-time
- Commercial Delivery
defenseunicorns
San Francisco and Los Angeles CA
Posted Aug 20, 2026
Account Executive — Autonomous Systems
Defense Unicorns is seeking an Account Executive to own and grow business across the autonomous systems and federal technology market.
This role will work with autonomous drone manufacturers, satellite and aerospace companies, Federal Systems Integrators, defense technology companies, and commercial organizations seeking to bring their products into the federal market.
The Account Executive will identify and develop strategic opportunities where Defense Unicorns can help customers build, deploy, secure, and operate modern software across mission systems and highly distributed environments. This includes platforms such as unmanned systems, satellites, weapons systems, tactical edge environments, and the infrastructure that supports them.
Working in close partnership with a Solutions Architect, the Account Executive will lead customer engagement from initial opportunity identification through technical discovery, solution development, commercial strategy, and close.
The ideal candidate understands that selling into this market rarely follows a traditional enterprise software motion. Success requires building relationships across engineering organizations, program leadership, business development teams, government stakeholders, systems integrators, and technology partners while understanding how Defense Unicorns can become part of a larger platform or program.
The Account Executive and Solutions Architect will operate as a tightly integrated customer team.
The Account Executive owns the business opportunity: identifying the right organizations and programs, developing relationships, understanding the buying environment, building the opportunity strategy, creating commercial alignment, and driving the opportunity to close.
The Solutions Architect owns the technical solution: understanding the customer's architecture, identifying where Defense Unicorns technology fits, developing solution architectures, and establishing technical confidence with customer engineering teams.
Together, they should be capable of engaging a customer early—sometimes before a formal requirement or procurement exists—and helping shape both the technical architecture and business path necessary to bring a capability into a federal program or mission system.
A successful Account Executive in this role will build a portfolio of strategic relationships and opportunities across the companies designing the next generation of autonomous and mission systems.
They will be equally comfortable discussing a platform roadmap with the leadership team of an autonomous systems company, developing a teaming strategy with a Federal Systems Integrator, working through an opportunity with a defense program, or helping a commercial company determine how to enter the federal market.
Rather than simply responding to existing software procurements, they will identify opportunities early and help customers understand how modern software infrastructure can become an enabling layer within their platforms.
Over time, they will establish Defense Unicorns as a trusted partner to organizations building and integrating software-defined mission systems.
This role may be a strong fit for someone who has worked as an Enterprise Account Executive, Strategic Account Executive, Federal Account Executive, Defense Technology Business Development Executive, Capture Manager, or sales leader serving defense, aerospace, autonomous systems, or emerging technology markets.
The strongest candidates will combine the discipline of an enterprise seller with the market-development instincts of a business development leader: someone who can create an opportunity where one does not yet exist, develop the ecosystem required to win it, and work alongside a deeply technical Solutions Architect to turn that opportunity into a deployed capability.
Base Salary:
$145,000 – $185,000 base salary.
This role is eligible to participate in Defense Unicorn's commission plan and it is common for employees in this role to receive total on-target earnings of $290k to $370k.
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.
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.
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.
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.