Release Engineer

Uncover; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Competitive salary

Employer pension contributions

Private health insurance

Hybrid work setup

Company retreats

Job summary

Valarian Technologies is seeking a Release Engineer to own the release lifecycle for Acra, ensuring secure, reproducible deployments across multi-cloud and air-gapped environments. You will build and maintain secure build systems, artifacts, and deployment automation that enables high-velocity shipping without compromising security or compliance.

You will implement cryptographic signing and SBOM generation, maintain IaC and GitOps workflows, and collaborate with platform and security teams to

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional experience in Release Engineering, DevOps, or SRE.
• Strong Kubernetes, Helm, and cloud-native infrastructure experience.
• Experience packaging software for air-gapped or restricted environments.
• Solid knowledge of software supply chain security, SBOM, and provenance.
• Proficiency with CI/CD tooling and GitOps workflows.

Responsibilities

• Own the Release Lifecycle: build and optimize CI/CD pipelines for Acra.
• Architect air-gapped packaging with reproducible artifacts.
• Enforce software supply chain security and SBOM generation.
• Maintain IaC and GitOps tooling (ArgoCD, Terraform) for deterministic updates.
• Collaborate with platform and security teams to ensure compliance and auditability.

Skills

Release Engineering

Cloud-Native

Air-Gapped Deployments

Supply Chain Security

CI/CD

GitOps

Go/Python/Bash/Rust

Tools

Kubernetes

Helm

ArgoCD

Terraform

GitHub Actions

GitLab CI

Job description

Valarian Technologies is a dual-use technology company building critical tools to safeguard the future in an era of evolving global security challenges. We're rethinking security beyond traditional military domains, addressing asymmetric threats that impact our technological advantage, economic strength, and democratic institutions. We build Acra – the platform foundation for everything we do as a dual-use technology company. The platform’s name, rooted in the Greek word for citadel (or, fortress), reflects the design and purpose of our infrastructure-agnostic secure enclaves: protecting critical data. Some of the government and commercial workflows include: increased operational resiliency for mission-critical systems and functions; enabling organisations to more quickly and widely adopt emerging technologies while ensuring the integrity of their intellectual property; information flow during disaster response scenarios, and zero-trust / least-privilege environments for M&A, attorney-client privileged communications, etc. And we’ve only scratched the surface. At our core, we're driven by a shared mission and a belief in making a tangible impact on our world. Whether you join our London HQ or the wider global organisation, you’ll be a part of collaborative, high-performing teams, creating cutting-edge software, platforms, and infrastructure.

The Role

As a Release Engineer at Valarian, you will own the delivery pipelines and release lifecycle for Acra—ensuring our hardened platform can be deployed reliably, predictably, and securely across cloud-native, on-premise, and strictly air-gapped environments. Releasing software at Valarian is not a typical SaaS continuous deployment pipeline. Because Acra operates as an enclave citadel in high-consequence environments (defense, government, and highly regulated enterprise), our releases must meet strict cryptographic verification, zero-trust integrity, and reproducible build standards. You will build and maintain the secure build systems, artifacts, release tooling, and deployment automation that allow engineering teams to ship high‑velocity code without compromising security, compliance, or operational resiliency.

What you’ll do

Own the Release Lifecycle: Build, maintain, and optimize CI/CD pipelines and release engineering tooling for the Acra platform stack across multiple environments (multi‑cloud, hybrid, on‑prem, and air‑gapped). Architect Air‑Gapped & Offline Packaging: Design reproducible, self‑contained release artifacts (Helm charts, container images, binary bundles) capable of deploying seamlessly into environments with zero internet connectivity. Enforce Software Supply Chain Security: Implement cryptographic signing (e.g., Sigstore/Cosign, SLSA provenance), Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) generation, and automated vulnerability gating across all build pipelines. Automate Infrastructure‑as‑Code (IaC): Maintain release‑side IaC and GitOps delivery frameworks (ArgoCD, Flux, Terraform) to ensure target environments maintain consistent posture and deterministic updates. Streamline Developer Velocity & Reliability: Partner closely with platform, security, and application engineering teams to standardize versioning, branching strategies, and automated testing feedback loops. Drive Release Readiness & Auditability: Ensure every Acra platform release produces immutable audit trails, change logs, and evidence artifacts required for government and commercial compliance standards.

What we are looking for

• 4+ years of professional experience in Release Engineering, DevOps, Platform Engineering, or SRE, with a strong focus on secure software delivery pipelines.
• Deep Cloud‑Native & Kubernetes Expertise: Strong hands‑on experience with Kubernetes orchestration, Helm, container registries, and cloud‑native infrastructure automation.
• Air‑Gapped / Heterogeneous Deployment Experience: Demonstrated experience packaging and releasing software for complex, non‑SaaS deployment environments (on‑premise, edge, or air‑gapped systems).
• Supply Chain Security Fluency: Solid understanding of build integrity concepts, artifact signing, provenance tracking, vulnerability scanning, and SBOM standards.
• CI/CD & GitOps Mastery: Proven experience designing enterprise pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Tekton, ArgoCD) with robust testing, canary/blue‑green strategies, and rollback mechanisms.
• Strong Scripting/Coding Skills: Proficiency in Go, Python, Bash, or Rust for building custom release automation tools and CLI utility workflows.

Nice to have

• Prior experience working in dual‑use, Defense, Government, Cyber Security, or Regulated Enterprise environments.
• SC or DV clearance eligibility in the UK.
• Experience with cryptographic key management (Vault, KMS) and code‑signing infrastructure.
• Familiarity with zero‑trust networking tools and Kubernetes security operators (Cilium, Istio, Kyverno, SPIRE).

Benefits

• Equity – because you have the right to own what you’re building
• A competitive salary – because we value your unique skills
• Employer pension contributions – because you deserve a secure future
• Private health insurance - because your health is important to us
• Hybrid work setup – because everyone has different needs
• Rewarding company retreats and meetups that respect your work/life balance – because we love getting to know each other!

Life at Valarian

Our culture is built on inclusivity, compassion and flexibility – we want everyone to be empowered to achieve their goals at Valarian. The world is changing, and so is our way of working. If you want to join us in the London office – it’s quite nice! – you’re welcome to; and if you’d prefer to work remotely, that’s fine too. And as we build elegant solutions to simplify the complexities of business collaboration, we also simplify work life: contribute wherever and whenever allows you to be your best self. We trust each other to consistently raise the bar, and we challenge each other to continually reach new heights.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.