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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Build and Release Engineer

💰 $90,000 - $150,000

EngineeringDevOpsRelease ManagementPlatform

🎯 Role Definition

The Build and Release Engineer is responsible for designing, implementing, and operating end-to-end build, packaging, and release processes that enable fast, reliable, and repeatable software delivery across environments. This role combines expertise in CI/CD pipelines, version control strategies, artifact management, deployment automation, and release orchestration with strong cross-functional collaboration to support development, QA, security, and operations teams. The Build and Release Engineer ensures releases meet quality, compliance, and uptime targets while continuously improving build velocity and deployment safety.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • DevOps Engineer / Platform Engineer
  • Software Engineer or QA Automation Engineer transitioning to release engineering
  • Systems Engineer or Build Automation Specialist

Advancement To:

  • Senior Build & Release Engineer / Principal Release Engineer
  • Release Engineering Manager or Release Manager
  • DevOps/Platform Engineering Lead or Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Lead

Lateral Moves:

  • Platform Engineer
  • Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
  • CI/CD Automation Engineer

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design, implement, and maintain robust CI/CD pipelines using industry tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Azure DevOps, CircleCI) to automate build, test, and deployment workflows across multiple product lines and environments.
  • Own end-to-end release orchestration for major and minor releases, including scheduling, gating, approval flows, rollback plans, and post-release verification to ensure predictable, low-risk deployments.
  • Develop and enforce branching models and versioning strategies (Git flow, trunk-based development, semantic versioning) that support parallel development, hotfixes, and continuous delivery.
  • Manage artifact repositories and package feeds (Nexus, Artifactory, Docker Registry, GitHub Packages) to ensure reproducible builds, access controls, retention policies, and artifact promotion across environments.
  • Create and maintain build scripts, build pipelines (Maven, Gradle, npm, Bazel), and packaging automation for multiple platforms and languages to reduce manual steps and human error.
  • Implement containerization best practices (Docker) and build/publish container images with proper labels, provenance metadata, and scanning for vulnerabilities before deployment.
  • Integrate automated test suites (unit, integration, smoke, and regression tests) into CI pipelines and ensure test feedback is fast and actionable for developers.
  • Author infrastructure-as-code templates and modules (Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM) to provision repeatable build and release environments, including ephemeral test and staging clusters.
  • Automate canary, blue-green, and rolling deployment strategies for production services, coordinating metrics and health checks to minimize user impact.
  • Configure and maintain release orchestration tools (Spinnaker, Octopus Deploy, Argo CD) and GitOps workflows for declarative deployments and environment reconciliation.
  • Implement secure build and release practices including code signing, artifact immutability, secrets management (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager), and pipeline access controls to meet compliance requirements.
  • Troubleshoot build failures, flaky tests, and pipeline performance issues, driving root-cause analysis, corrective actions, and process improvements to reduce cycle time.
  • Collaborate with security, compliance, and QA teams to integrate static analysis (SAST), dependency scanning, and compliance checks into release pipelines.
  • Monitor deployment health, release metrics (MTTR, lead time for changes, deployment frequency), and pipeline KPIs; produce dashboards and runbooks for continuous improvement.
  • Maintain and evolve platform tooling, including centralized agent/workflow runners, caching, artifact promotion automation, and distributed build farms to optimize throughput and cost.
  • Coordinate cross-team release readiness reviews, release notes, stakeholder communications, and operational runbooks for major changes.
  • Design rollback and remediation playbooks for failed releases, including automated rollback mechanisms and manual recovery steps when necessary.
  • Implement multi-cloud and hybrid deployment strategies, ensuring portability and consistent build/release behavior across AWS, Azure, GCP, or on-prem infrastructure.
  • Optimize pipeline performance and build caching strategies (remote caching, artifact caching, incremental builds) to shorten developer feedback loops.
  • Define and enforce SLAs for build systems and release engineering support, providing on-call rotation, incident response, and post-incident analysis for release-related outages.
  • Maintain rigorous documentation for build systems, pipeline templates, environment configurations, and operational procedures to support scalability and team onboarding.
  • Mentor and train development teams on CI/CD best practices, git workflows, and how to write pipeline-friendly builds and tests that enable continuous delivery.
  • Evaluate and recommend new tools, platform improvements, and automation opportunities that align with organization strategy and improve build/release reliability.
  • Drive cross-functional process changes to reduce handoffs, manual steps, and bottlenecks in the release lifecycle, supporting Agile/DevOps transformation initiatives.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc release and deployment requests from product and engineering teams and assist with environment troubleshooting.
  • Assist in maintaining release calendars, tracking dependencies, and coordinating with product owners to minimize release conflicts.
  • Contribute to incident postmortems where build or release processes were contributing factors and ensure follow-up actions are tracked and implemented.
  • Help manage license usage and cost optimization for CI/CD tooling and build infrastructure.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies to align build and release activities with development priorities.
  • Provide occasional training sessions and workshops to elevate team competence in release automation and best practices.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Deep experience designing and operating CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Azure DevOps, CircleCI, or similar platforms.
  • Strong proficiency with Git and branching/versioning strategies (GitFlow, trunk-based, semantic versioning) and experience with code review workflows.
  • Expertise in build tools and package managers such as Maven, Gradle, npm, Yarn, pip, and experience creating reproducible builds.
  • Containerization and orchestration knowledge (Docker, Kubernetes, Helm) including building, tagging, and deploying container images.
  • Infrastructure-as-Code experience with Terraform, CloudFormation, or ARM templates to provision build and deployment environments.
  • Scripting and automation skills in Bash, Python, Groovy, or similar languages to create pipeline steps, tooling wrappers, and automation scripts.
  • Familiarity with artifact repositories and package feeds (JFrog Artifactory, Sonatype Nexus, Docker Registry, GitHub Packages) and lifecycle promotion patterns.
  • Experience with release orchestration and GitOps tools (Spinnaker, Argo CD, Flux, Octopus Deploy) and deploying via declarative manifests.
  • Knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) including CI/CD integrations, IAM, storage, and container registries.
  • Security and compliance tooling integration: SAST, DAST, dependency scanning (Snyk, Dependabot), code signing, and secrets management (Vault).
  • Monitoring and observability skills: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK stack, and ability to instrument deployment health checks and build metrics.
  • Familiarity with automated testing integration (unit, integration, smoke), test orchestration, and flake mitigation strategies.
  • Experience with build caching, distributed build systems, and performance tuning to optimize pipeline throughput and developer feedback time.
  • Ability to design rollback strategies, automated rollbacks, and staged deployment processes to reduce production risk.
  • Knowledge of release governance, change control, and artifact immutability best practices for regulated environments.

Soft Skills

  • Clear communicator able to translate technical constraints into business impact and coordinate multi-team releases.
  • Strong stakeholder management — able to balance competing priorities, negotiate release windows, and escalate appropriately.
  • Problem solver who can perform root cause analysis and implement durable fixes rather than temporary workarounds.
  • Detail-oriented with a focus on quality, reproducibility, and creating predictable release outcomes.
  • Collaborative team player who mentors engineers on CI/CD best practices and builds consensus on process changes.
  • Able to operate in fast-paced environments and adapt to changing priorities while maintaining operational stability.
  • Proactive planner who anticipates release risks, dependencies, and mitigations before they impact delivery.
  • Comfortable with on-call rotation and responding to release incidents with composure and urgency.
  • Continuous improvement mindset with a bias toward automation and reducing manual toil.
  • Strong documentation and training skills to codify processes, playbooks, and runbooks for cross-team use.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Computer Science, Cloud Computing, or related field, or industry certifications (AWS/Azure/GCP, Certified Kubernetes Administrator, HashiCorp Terraform Associate).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • DevOps / Cloud Computing

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–7 years in build, release, CI/CD, or DevOps roles

Preferred: 5+ years of hands-on experience building and operating enterprise-grade build and release systems, with proven ownership of multiple production releases and tooling migrations across cloud or hybrid environments.

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