Interested in pursuing a career in the defense industry?
We’re here to help!
We’ve scoured the DefenseTech landscape to uncover super cool companies that are growing like crazy and are eager to bring on board talented folks like you.
Ordered from smallest to largest in size, we’ve included key information to help you get a pulse on each company.
Happy job search!
Unknot.id, Inc.
- Work Policy: Office in Orlando, Florida. Remote opportunities available.
- Company Size: 5-10
- Tech Stack: Software (Android, iOS, Cloud), machine learning, sensor signal processing, SLAM, embedded devices/IOT
- Year Founded: 2021
- Initial Funding: Seed (Total Funding Amount: $1.9M)
- 2nd Round Funding in Process: Seed (Seeking $3M)
What problem are they solving? The evolution of GPS technology has transformed outdoor navigation, but indoor positioning and navigation remain a challenge. GPS signals weaken within dense infrastructures, affecting critical sectors. Unknot.id was born in response to this challenge, and Unknot.id has developed innovative AI/ML software that enables precise tracking and navigation of human and assets at a fraction of the cost of prevailing infrastructure-based technologies. Their SDKs seamlessly integrate with devices; cell phones, wearables, etc., supporting OEM integration and direct sales to large corporations.
What does the future hold for this technology? Their work with the Department of Defense “keeping our soldiers safe” is ongoing and expanding, and they have big plans for 2024 and beyond, as they are ready to commercialize their software for various sectors, including:
- Casinos: Ensuring the safety and efficiency of security and maintenance personnel.
- Airports / Train Stations / Prisons: Navigating security personnel and conducting postmortem forensics with precision.
- Manufacturing: Tracking people and managing asset usage and location.
- First Responders: Providing location tracking and guidance to firefighters, police, and search and rescue teams within complex environments.
- Cruise Ships: Enhancing passenger experiences by helping them navigate the ship or locate others.
The possibilities of digitizing the physical world to digital in real-time are limitless, and they are determined to expand into even more sectors.
Take a look at the technology in action:
Find out more in this interview with Founder and CEO Dr. Devu Shila.
About the culture. Unknot.id is a remote native team with a strong passion for independence and personal growth. They encourage all team members to explore their ideas, study the tools that appeal to them, and develop their optimal work-life balance.
“The mindset at this company is that everyone has a voice. No idea is a bad idea. We want people who can innovate, who are excited to be part of a startup, and who have entrepreneurial mindsets and working styles.” – David Litos, CSO
Excited about the mission? Take a look at their open roles and apply!
TRAXyL
- Work Policy: Hybrid (Gainesville, VA)
- Company Size: 10-25
- Year Founded: 2014
- Funding: Seed, $5M
What problem are they solving? TRAXyL is focused on solving the last-mile connectivity problem. Their team is on a mission to reduce the cost and time of getting high-speed internet to hard-to-reach and underserved areas. They use a “painted” fiber technique to install fiber optic cables on road and sidewalk pavement surfaces rather than burying them underground.
Learn about their technology:
The idea of TRAXyL began when CEO, Daniel Turner, saw the challenges his Dad faced when trying to get Fiber-Optic Internet to his home in Virginia.
Learn more about the story behind TRAXyL in this interview:
Where are they making an impact? TRAXyL’s proprietary Minimally Disruptive Installation (MDI) technology is disrupting the entire installation industry.
They’ve won contracts with various government agencies, including the Air Force and Army Corps. Today, they’re working with communities to close the digital divide, but they’re also working with smart cities, military bases, and campuses to solve challenging situations in urban environments.
About the culture. This team has embraced the mantra of “Build something together and fail fast.” They encourage employees to test the boundaries of innovation and operate autonomously.
TRAXyL’s “painted” fiber approach is poised to shake things up in the installation market. They’re building a team of innovative, talented engineers. Ready to join them? Check out their open roles.
Eolian
- Work Policy: Fully remote and hybrid opportunities available (HQ in Tampa, FL)
- Company Size: 25-50
- Tech Stack: Unity, Azure, Unreal, Kubernetes, Android
- Year Founded: 2016
About the company. The team at Eolian develops Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality (MR), AI/Machine Learning, & 3D Animation solutions for enterprise & government/public sector entities. In short, they’re on a mission to help save lives using VR and AR technologies.
Most of their tools focus on defense needs, including mission planning, briefing, command and control, and situational awareness. Take a look at one of their most recent products:
How do technical employees collaborate? While most of the engineering team is fully distributed, they gather at the Tampa headquarters for a quarterly team retreat. During this time they participate in a mix of team building activities, a hackathon, and innovative work.
They have an internal department called “liaisons” consisting of employees who come from a military background. The engineering and liaison departments regularly collaborate to ensure they’re building a valuable product. During company retreats, they host internal classes and briefs to make sure both departments are collaborating well and “speaking the same language.”
What are the growth opportunities for employees?
“We don’t always hire someone who’s qualified for the job today. Instead, we focus on finding someone who has a decent amount of relevant experience and then we coach them up and help them grow into it.” – Mike Simmons, COO
The leaders at Eolian have also created a place where employees are encouraged to take courses, attend conferences, or gain certifications that will help them expand their skills. On top of that, they try to emulate a model where employees are encouraged to spend 10% of their time working on their own thing. This fosters an environment of discovery and innovation.
Want to join the team? Check out their open roles.
Overwatch Imaging
- Work Policy: Office in Hood River, Oregon. Remote work available.
- Company Size: 50-75
- Tech Stack: C++/CUDA, C#/.NET, Docker, Jenkins, React, PyTorch, ScaleAI… and hardware too!
- Year Founded: 2016
- Funding: Series A (Total Funding Amount: $13.5M)
What’s the mission? Overwatch Imaging is on a mission to deliver critical intelligence faster through automation. Mission managers require easy and fast situational awareness about the threats they need to manage, and sensors are becoming ubiquitous to collect data to support them. However, with so many sensors, in a lot of cases people have too much data, which makes it harder and slower to find the key piece of intelligence. Overwatch Imaging solves this with edge automation software and smart sensors that enable the collection of more data, so they’re sure to capture the key information, then use AI to deliver only the important intelligence in real-time to users. In short, they empower decision-makers to focus less on the search and more on the best response.
Learn more about the work their team’s doing:
About the culture. This team has truly rallied around the idea that they support missions that matter. Working from wildfire management to maritime search and rescue to defense and intelligence applications, it’s clear that the work they do helps causes and helps users. The leaders at Overwatch Imaging reinforce that concept with the business they pursue and the investors they partner with… they know that when team members feel like their work matters, they are eager to go the extra mile.
How does leadership encourage professional growth for team members?
“We are a fast-moving startup, and we hire passionate team members who are mission-driven, so encouraging professional growth here is easy.” – Greg Davis, CEO
At Overwatch Imaging, each member of the team is given a dedicated professional development budget. They also provide self-directed time and a late-start workday each week so teammates can grow and learn adjacent skills.
They have built a strong culture of working as a self-organized agile team, and when anyone identifies a good idea that advances the strategy and supports customer success, they find ways to help the individual pursue it.
Ready to join their mission? Check out their career opportunities.
Accrete
- Work Policy: Hybrid & Remote work available. HQ in NYC.
- Company Size: 100-150 (Globally)
- Tech Stack: Python, Javascript, Kubernetes, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, AWS
- Year Founded: 2017
About the company. The team at Accrete is on a mission to create AI so powerful it can do complex analytical work that would otherwise require an army of human experts. Many organizations, businesses, and government agencies face 3 common problems: organizational knowledge loss, information overload, and lack of predictive insights. Accrete’s AI distills data down and generates predictive insights that are beyond human capacity to combat these three problems.
Today, their product is used in both commercial and government sectors.
They were recently named One of America’s Best Startup Employers.
How does leadership encourage professional growth? The leaders at Accrete have established a culture of continuous learning. Here are just a couple of ways they foster that culture:
- Accrete promotes a culture of excellence through learning and development budgets for all employees.
- Competitive Compensation & Rewards: Accrete’s compensation strategy is designed to reward employees that work collaboratively to help the company achieve ambitious goals.
- A collaborative environment and team culture where employees are encouraged to actively contribute ideas.
How do they prioritize diversity in the workplace? Diversity is a priority for the entire team at Accrete. In fact, they’ve seen that their AI models perform better when working with diverse data.
They have actively established several standards that encourage the growth of a diverse team:
- An inclusive set of benefits that is flexible and attractive to everyone.
- Ongoing improvement efforts on hiring practices that encourage a diverse pool of candidates and team members.
Want to join the team? Check out their open roles!
Second Front Systems
- Work Policy: Fully Remote
- Company Size: 100-150
- Year Founded: 2014
- Funding: Series A (Total Funding Amount: $42.1M)
What’s the mission? The team at Second Front Systems is on a mission to accelerate the delivery of emerging commercial technologies to U.S. and Allied warfighters. They aim to bridge the gap between the rapid pace of innovation in the commercial sector and the ability of the military and government to acquire these innovative technologies.
What problem are they solving? The current process of delivering commercial software to the Department of Defense (DoD) is inefficient and cumbersome. Second Front Systems addresses this issue by streamlining the accreditation process through a repeatable automated DevSecOps pipeline, reducing software delivery timelines, and simplifying the deployment of commercial software onto DoD networks.
Learn more about what they’re building:
How does leadership encourage professional growth? This team is all about growing together. Here are just a few ways they accomplish that:
- Annual Stipend: A $500 annual stipend is given to employees for professional development. It can be used in a variety of ways – classes, webinars, conferences, etc.
- Lunch and Learn Series for Engineering: These Lunch and Learns cover a range of topics, like understanding how SaaS revenue metrics work (for broader professional development), but also learning new programming languages. They’re also open to the entire company for anyone who wants to learn about the topic.
- Hack-a-thon: Coming soon! This will be a chance for the engineering team to apply their knowledge and grow!
Hear firsthand from DevSecOps Engineer, Keohn Akins, about how he’s grown since joining the team.
Interested in joining the team? Check out their open roles.
Epirus
- Work Policy: Remote or Hybrid (Offices in LA and DC)
- Company Size: 150-200
- Year Founded: 2018
- Funding: Series C (Total Funding: $287.6M)
About the company. Epirus is on a mission to create innovative power solutions that solve complex national security problems. One of their first missions was in the Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems (c-UAS) space, in particular when it comes to defense against drone swarms. Their team works closely with the U.S. Department of Defense to create and field high-power microwave capabilities to defend our nation’s allies against hostile swarms, a rapidly proliferating threat that is quickly defining modern warfare.
Take a look at the products they’re building:
What professional growth opportunities are there for technical team members?
“One of the cool things about the team at Epirus is we have a wide breadth of engineering disciplines, including mechanical, software, RF, industrial, electrical… you name it. We need all of those skill sets to develop the complex system we’re working on. As a result, there are a lot of cross-training opportunities for employees, enabling them to grow their technical skills.” – Dan Kultran, CTO
In addition, the company’s contracts with DARPA and other research institutions naturally challenges the team to be on the cutting edge.
Kultran explains, “Our engineers face problems that haven’t yet been solved, problems that we call ‘DARPA hard.’ Our team consists of people who love solving difficult problems.”
This team has built a culture of rapidly demonstrating and solving problems.
They’ve established an agile mindset that pushes them to work rapidly and effectively.
This team is making serious waves in the drone defense space and was recently named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies for 2023!
Interested in joining? Take a look at their open roles and apply!
Exiger
- Work Policy: Hybrid. U.S. offices are located in DC, NYC, San Antonio, Cincinnati, and Richmond (coming soon!)
- Company Size: 750-1,000
- Tech Stack: In-house data science, infrastructure and engineering technologists building on a high-performance data platform using the following tech stack, which includes: Java, Spring, Spark, Kafka, Elasticsearch, Python for Model Training, AWS Cloud, Kubernetes, Snowflake and other best in class NLP / AI capabilities
- Year Founded: 2013
- Total Funding Amount: $33M
What’s their mission? The team at Exiger is on a mission to make the world a safer and more transparent place to succeed.
How are they making that happen? This team is building powerful technology that uncovers risks and reveals insights that empower corporations, government agencies, and banks to make confident business relationship decisions in their supplier and supply chain ecosystem. They’ve deployed this technology at over 50 Federal Agencies and 150 Fortune 500 Companies.
“Our customers use us as the only end-to-end platform that allows them to reduce costs, increase resilience, and manage compliance.” – Brandon Daniels, CEO
Learn more about their product:
How do they encourage professional growth for technical team members?
Benefits. The leadership at Exiger intentionally invests in their employees’ benefits. CEO, Brandon Daniels, explains, “I make the health insurance plan that I use to protect my own family affordable for everyone at the company.”
They also provide generous flexible time off and four months of paid maternity or paternity leave. Check out their full list of benefits.
“We believe that if we get compensation, benefits, and time off right, then our employees are going to be more productive at work. We’re really trying to strike that balance. We don’t have it perfect, but we’re getting much better.” – Brandon Daniels, CEO
Learning and Development. The team at Exiger has invested millions into onboarding training and continuous improvement training.
Every week, the company hosts learning and innovation sessions put on by the PhDs who run their AI team. Other weeks, they bring in experts to speak on specific topics that are relevant to the team’s professional growth.
They provide a comprehensive training library including over 100 hundred bespoke training courses on a variety of topics along with other resources for employees to access and sponsor specific learning opportunities and certificates. Lastly, they offer management training for employees stepping into leadership roles.
“First, we’re working to make sure we have a balance between work and life so people can think about professional growth, then we invest internally and externally, giving people space and opportunity to invest that time, allowing them to get technical and management skills that will help them succeed.” – Brandon Daniels, CEO
What kind of employees are they looking for?
The team at Exiger is incredibly mission-driven. They can see their work’s impact in the real world and are passionate about what they do. They’re looking for team members who are open-minded, dynamic, collaborative, and mission-driven.
Want to join the team? Check out their open roles and connect on LinkedIn.
Here at hatch I.T., we’re passionate about helping tech professionals land their next role at a growing startup or small business. If you’re looking for more technical openings at an exciting tech company, check out our collection of technical career opportunities.
