Software Engineer III – Release Engineering

Cubic Corporation•Ashburn, VA

2d•$92,000 - $105,000

About The Position

Cubic Defense is seeking a software engineer to own and improve the release process for a distributed software platform, coordinating platform releases with the broader product release cycle. The platform includes a web-based control plane, runtime services, platform adapters, deployment charts, supporting components, and shared contract libraries. The engineer will work across these components to assemble, validate, document, and deliver reliable releases. The position requires independent work, sound technical judgment, proactive issue resolution, and coordination with component owners and other stakeholders. The engineer will assume end-to-end release ownership and provide release-engineering coverage for senior engineers when needed. The role focuses on automation, systems integration, and making release processes predictable and repeatable.

Requirements

At least 4 years of professional software engineering, DevOps, platform engineering, or release engineering experience.
Ability to obtain a security clearance.
Strong working knowledge of Git, branching, tagging, pull requests, and structured versioning.
Hands-on experience building, maintaining, and troubleshooting CI/CD systems and automated build or deployment pipelines.
Working knowledge of containers and modern deployment environments.
Ability to independently read, troubleshoot, and modify code in at least one modern programming language.
Experience working independently across multiple repositories and assessing dependencies between components.
Experience diagnosing complex build, test, configuration, or deployment failures and driving issues through resolution.
Strong written communication, attention to detail, and ability to communicate technical risks and recommended actions clearly.
Ability to independently own an established release process, exercise sound judgment, and implement practical improvements.
Ability to proactively coordinate work across multiple engineering teams and release schedules, following through on dependencies and commitments.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Kubernetes, deployment charts, container registries, and image promotion.
Familiarity with backend, frontend, or systems programming languages and frameworks.
Experience maintaining release notes, upgrade documentation, or deployment runbooks.
Familiarity with API contracts, service interfaces, and distributed systems.
Experience with integration or end-to-end testing in containerized environments.
Exposure to software supply-chain practices such as dependency scanning, artifact signing, SBOM generation, or vulnerability management.
Experience taking ownership of coordinated releases across related products or platforms.

Responsibilities

Investigate and fix software defects and update dependencies to address security vulnerabilities, assessing effects on release stability.
Plan and execute platform releases in coordination with the broader product release schedule.
Coordinate versioning and release readiness across repositories, services, deployment charts, container images, and supporting components; resolve dependency and readiness gaps.
Maintain release branches, tags, changelogs, release notes, and supporting documentation for consistency and traceability.
Design, build, and improve CI/CD automation for compiling, testing, packaging, publishing, and deploying releases.
Plan and execute release validation in representative environments before promotion, evaluate results, and address readiness concerns.
Verify compatibility among control-plane services, runtime components, platform adapters, shared contracts, and supported integrations; identify and coordinate resolution of cross-component issues.
Track and assess dependencies and component revisions included in each release, identifying changes that create compatibility or delivery risk.
Coordinate with engineers, product owners, quality teams, platform teams, and other stakeholders on release scope, timing, and readiness; resolve issues within scope and escalate broader decisions.
Investigate failed builds, deployments, and release-validation tests, identify root causes, and drive corrective action with component owners.
Develop and maintain documentation for known issues, upgrade requirements, rollback procedures, and operational considerations.
Establish and improve repeatable release checklists, quality gates, and readiness reporting; identify risks and recommend release actions.
Identify manual release steps, prioritize improvements, and replace them incrementally with safe, maintainable automation.
Own post-release verification and resolve or appropriately escalate release-related issues; provide release-engineering coverage for senior teammates when needed.