Staff Build Engineer

RapidFort, Inc.

4h•$120,000 - $200,000•Remote

About The Position

RapidFort builds hardened, production-ready container images and automation that help enterprises and U.S. government agencies reduce software supply chain risk and deploy secure workloads faster. We go beyond vulnerability scanning. Our platform is remediation-first, focused on runtime hardening, minimal attack surface, and operational simplicity for cloud-native and Kubernetes environments. Our customers run mission-critical workloads — including regulated and DoD-adjacent environments — and they depend on us to get this right every day. We’re hiring a Staff Build Engineer — a deeply experienced, hands-on engineer who thrives close to the metal and takes full ownership of systems that must work. This role sits at the core of RapidFort’s product. You will own the build pipelines, hardened container image catalog, and automation systems that power everything we ship. You’ll be the engineer teams rely on when builds fail, scale introduces friction, or reliability matters more than speed. This is not a passive DevOps role. It’s for someone who: Knows Linux and containers inside and out Is calm, decisive, and effective in high-impact operational environments Thinks in terms of reliability, repeatability, and scale Improves systems steadily rather than chasing shiny tools You will act as both operator and senior technical owner, keeping today’s builds rock-solid while evolving the platform as RapidFort grows.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in Build Engineering, DevOps, Platform, or Infrastructure Engineering
U.S. Citizenship required pursuant to federal contract and security requirements
Deep Linux expertise and strong command-line fluency
Strong Python and Bash scripting experience
Advanced experience with Docker and container build systems, including debugging complex image issues
Proven experience operating and troubleshooting CI/CD pipelines in production environments
Hands-on experience maintaining and customizing Jenkins pipelines
Solid working knowledge of Kubernetes, sufficient to diagnose image, deployment, and runtime issues
Experience troubleshooting distributed systems and remote build environments
Strong familiarity with Git-based workflows (GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket)
Experience improving build reliability, performance, and throughput at scale
Experience with AWS and/or Azure cloud environments
Familiarity with container security, image scanning, or software supply chain tooling
Experience with observability tools and build metrics
Experience working in early-stage startups or fast-scaling engineering environments
Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible, or similar)
Exposure to regulated, government, or security-sensitive environments
Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate across engineering teams
Demonstrated ownership mindset and comfort owning routine operational responsibilities

Responsibilities

Own and execute daily builds and publish a trusted, up-to-date catalog of RapidFort’s curated container images
Maintain, monitor, and continuously improve the entire build environment, including Docker builds, image tooling, automation, and supporting infrastructure
Triage and debug build failures, container issues, and image-related problems across engineering teams
Write and maintain automation and internal tooling in Python and Bash
Partner closely with application and platform engineers to improve build workflows, reduce friction, and increase reliability
Drive CI/CD stability, performance, and consistency across environments
Scale build infrastructure to support increasing image volume, customers, and engineering velocity
Identify and eliminate manual or error-prone processes through automation
Document critical workflows and operational runbooks
Serve as a senior technical voice on build systems, container tooling, image hardening, and supply chain integrity