Senior Staff Software Release Engineer (Technical Lead)

About The Role

Our company is experiencing significant growth and is seeking skilled leaders to join our agile, world-class team. In this role, you will be responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining the software build and release processes that ensure our products are delivered with the highest quality and efficiency. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, optimize workflows, and manage a small team of engineers, driving best practices in software development and release management.

Duties/Responsibilities:

Build Process Development:

• Design and maintain automated build systems using Bazel, Github Actions or similar.
• Ensure reliable and efficient build processes for various platforms and environments.

Release Management:

• Develop and manage the release pipeline for software products, ensuring timely and successful deployments.
• Coordinate release schedules with product management and engineering teams.

Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD):

• Implement and improve CI/CD practices to streamline development workflows and enhance software quality.
• Monitor and troubleshoot CI/CD pipelines, ensuring quick resolution of issues.

Collaboration:

• Work closely with developers, QA, DX and infrastructure teams to ensure smooth integration and delivery of software.
• Act as a liaison between teams to address build and release concerns, promoting a culture of collaboration.

Documentation and Reporting:

• Create and maintain comprehensive documentation for build and release processes, configurations, and tools.
• Provide regular status reports and metrics on build and release activities to stakeholders.

Management:

• Manage a small tactical team of 3-5 engineers
• Provide guidance and mentorship to junior engineers, sharing knowledge on best practices and tools.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement within the team.

About You

Experience

• 8+ years of experience in software build and release engineering or related roles.
• 2+ years of experience managing a team or 4+ years of being a technical lead
• Strong experience with build automation tools (e.g., Jenkins, Github Actions, CircleCI) and version control systems (e.g., Git).

Technical Skills

• Proficient in scripting languages (e.g., Bash, Python) for automation tasks.
• Proficient with Kubernetes and containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, OCI)
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure) and IaC ( Terraform, CDK, Ansible)
• Understanding of software development methodologies (Agile, DevOps) and lifecycle processes.
• Proficient in release management processes, best practices, and technologies, including versioning, tagging, and branching strategies, artifact repositories and registries ( Docker, Artifactory, Sonatype),  packaging / distribution systems (npm, pip, appimage, etc)

Soft Skills

• Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively in a team-oriented environment.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and adapt to changing requirements.

Bonus Points

• Experience with firmware development lifecycles and release management
• Experience with Hybrid deployments (On Prem + Cloud)
• Experience with Bazel, Nix, Github Actions, Remote Build Systems
• Experience with Observability platforms (eg Datadog, New Relic, or similar)
• SOC 2 or related (HIPAA/HITRUST/PCI) Experience

Other Duties

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities required of the employee for this job, as this is subject to change at any time with or without notice. Employees will be required to follow any other job-related instructions and perform any other job-related duties requested by anyone authorized to give such instructions or assignments. 

Work Environment & Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions. 

While performing the duties of this job, the employee routinely is required to sit; talk and hear; use hands to touch, feel, handle, push/pull, and move objects; see details of objects that are less than a few feet away; see differences between colors, shades, and brightness. The employee is occasionally required to stand, walk, and move around the office; stoop, kneel, crouch, twist, crawl, reach, and stretch; and see details of objects more than a few feet away.