Sales Associate (Mission Associate)

Location: McLean, VA Reports to: Director of Revenue Operations Type: Full time

About Defense Unicorns

Defense Unicorns delivers secure software capabilities to national security missions across the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, and the federal government. Our sales team spends its time in the field with the people who own those missions. [Replace with standard company boilerplate as needed.]

About the role

Our sellers close deals in rooms, on bases, and at customer sites, not behind a laptop doing data entry. This role exists to protect their selling time. As a Mission Associate, you support account executives and deal owners across our federal, DoD, and Intelligence Community territories, along with our work with commercial independent software vendors (ISVs), federal systems integrators (FSIs), and the broader defense industrial base (DIB). You take on the administrative work that surrounds every deal. You are their eyes and ears when they are on the road, the person who keeps the record straight in HubSpot, and the one who makes sure nothing slips while they are mobile.

You will also carry a second mandate: figure out where seller time actually goes. You will track the recurring administrative tasks that eat the most hours, quantify them, and bring recommendations to our sales operations and enablement teams so we can streamline and automate the work rather than just absorb it.

What you will do

Deal support and CRM ownership

• Capture meeting notes, next steps, new contacts, and deal updates in HubSpot within one business day of every customer interaction, working from seller voice memos, Slack messages, and call debriefs.
• Make sure seller email is synced to HubSpot, with inboxes connected and customer threads logged to the right contacts and deals, and fix gaps when logging breaks.
• Keep deal records current ahead of weekly deal meetings and monthly deal reviews, including stages, close dates, forecast categories, and qualification fields.
• Maintain contact and account data quality, including new contact creation, role changes, org structure updates, and ownership hygiene.

Calendaring and meeting logistics

• Own scheduling for customer meetings, demos, and internal deal calls, including invites, confirmations, reschedules, and reminders.
• Coordinate meeting logistics such as visitor requests, base access paperwork, demo setup, travel details, and conference schedules.
• Prepare short pre-meeting briefs covering attendees, account history, open action items, and relevant recent activity.

Quoting and order support

• Draft quotes and pricing documents for seller review, track internal approvals, and keep paperwork moving so deals never stall on administration.
• Route RFIs, RFQs, and proposal requests to the proposal team, then track them through to submission so the seller always knows status.

Field support

• Monitor inbound customer email and Slack for sellers who are traveling, flag anything time sensitive, and handle routine responses at the seller's direction.
• Turn field debriefs into same-day CRM updates and draft follow-up emails for the seller to review and send, using AI tools to keep turnaround fast and quality high.
• Track open action items across each seller's deals and follow up with internal owners so commitments made in the field get met.

Process improvement

• Maintain a running log of the administrative tasks that consume the most seller time, with time estimates.
• Deliver a monthly summary to sales operations and enablement identifying the top time drains, with specific recommendations for templates, automation, or process changes.
• Help implement approved improvements such as email templates, HubSpot workflows, sequences, checklists, and AI-assisted automations.

What success looks like

• Sellers in your coverage group measurably gain field selling time within your first two quarters.
• Every customer meeting is logged in HubSpot within one business day.
• Quotes are drafted within two business days of request, and scheduling requests turn around same day.
• Your monthly time report leads to at least one implemented process improvement per quarter.

Qualifications

Required

• One to three years in sales support, inside sales, sales operations, or a similar coordination role.
• Strong written communication. Much of this job is turning rough inputs into clean, professional notes and emails.
• Experience with a CRM. HubSpot experience is a plus, and you will be expected to become fluent quickly.
• Highly organized with strong attention to detail, and comfortable managing many small threads across multiple sellers at once.
• Proficient at using generative AI tools to transcribe, draft, summarize, and streamline routine administrative tasks, with an expectation of using these tools daily to increase team efficiency.
• Discretion handling sensitive customer and deal information.
• U.S. citizenship, required for work supporting our federal and defense customer base.

Preferred

• Exposure to federal, DoD, or Intelligence Community sales cycles, government contracting, or the commercial ISV, federal systems integrator, and defense industrial base ecosystem.
• Familiarity with sales qualification frameworks such as MEDDPICC.
• Experience preparing quotes or supporting proposal workflows.

Growth path

This role is built as a launch point. Mission Associates who master the mechanics of deal support are strong candidates for future quota-carrying sales roles, revenue operations, or sales enablement positions as the team grows.

Compensation

Base salary plus an annual performance bonus targeted at approximately 10 percent of base salary, tied to individual performance and company achievement of sales targets.

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. 

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.

CCPA DISCLOSURE