Build and Release Engineer (DevOps)

Northwood Space • Los Angeles, CA

3d • $130,000 - $197,000

About The Position

Northwood is a modern space infrastructure company building a global network of phased array ground stations for reliable, real-time communications with satellite missions. Its vertically integrated approach covers the design, construction, and rapid deployment of scalable systems. The Build and Release Engineer (DevOps) role is part of the Platform team and works across Northwood’s engineering disciplines. The role owns the build system, CI pipelines, test harness integrations, and developer environments used by FPGA, embedded, DSP, cloud, and ground teams. It focuses on establishing reusable workflows, improving the speed and reliability of software delivery from commit to release, and supporting engineers with build and pipeline issues.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• At least 3 years of experience in build engineering, DevOps, CI/CD, developer productivity, or platform engineering.
• Hands-on experience owning CI pipelines such as GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Buildkite, or similar for a multi-team codebase.
• Proficiency in Python and shell scripting, and ability to read and build Rust or C/C++ projects.
• Solid understanding of containers, Linux, and Git workflows.
• Demonstrated ability to diagnose and fix slow or unreliable builds, with specific examples.

Nice To Haves

• Production experience with Nix, OCI, and hermetic build systems.
• Experience with cross-compilation and embedded or FPGA toolchains.
• Experience with remote build caching and distributed builds.
• Familiarity with software supply chain security tooling, SAST, DAST, and SBOMs.
• Exposure to Kubernetes, ArgoCD, or GitOps deployment patterns.
• Experience in a regulated environment such as CMMC, NIST 800-171, or similar, where build provenance matters.

Responsibilities

• Own the build system, including reproducibility, caching, build times, and cross-platform targets spanning cloud services, embedded firmware, and FPGA gateware.
• Design and maintain reusable GitLab CI templates and pipeline components, including fast early checks before expensive builds and tests; use data to reduce flakiness and cycle time.
• Build reproducible developer environments so new engineers can be productive on day one.
• Implement release automation and promotion mechanics from development through staging to production, including artifact signing and supply chain checks.
• Instrument the build and CI system, publish developer productivity metrics, and use them to prioritize the tooling roadmap.
• Support engineers with build and pipeline issues and turn recurring problems into permanent fixes.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level