Staff Developer Experience Engineer

Hidden Jobs; United States; Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, vision & dental insurance

Flexible vacation policy

Parental leave

Hybrid/remote work

Job summary

Hidden Jobs seeks a staff-level engineer to shape how a cybersecurity organization builds, tests, releases, and operates software. You will lead Developer Experience, owning CI/CD, build systems, container images, artifact promotion, and release workflows, with cross-team influence to improve delivery quality.

You will mentor engineers, drive adoption of shared capabilities, and communicate decisions across Platform, Security, QA, Product, and Program Management.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in Developer Experience or related fields with tooling ownership.
• Deep experience designing and operating CI/CD, preferably GitLab CI/CD.
• Hands-on container builds and reproducible builds.
• Strong Kubernetes development or delivery knowledge.
• Proficiency in Go and Python for automation.
• Proven cross-team leadership and clear communication.

Responsibilities

• Define the architecture and roadmap for local development, tooling, CI/CD, build systems, and release workflows.
• Lead initiatives standardizing the path from code change to production and reduce manual coordination.
• Build reusable CI/CD templates, runner capabilities, developer workflows, test gates, artifact promotion paths, release manifests, and rollback procedures.
• Establish sustainable practices for shared container images, build performance, reproducibility, scanning, signing, provenance, and supply-chain security.
• Design safe AI-assisted development workflows that integrate cleanly with code review, testing, scanning, permissions, and auditability.
• Mentor engineers, develop technical owners, and communicate complex decisions across Platform, Security, QA, Product, and Program Management.

Skills

CI/CD systems

GitLab CI/CD

Docker/OCI images

Kubernetes workflows

Go

Python

Cross-team leadership

Communication skills

Tools

GitLab Runner

Job description

Role overview

A staff-level engineering position focused on shaping how a cybersecurity organization builds, tests, releases, and operates software. The role leads a Developer Experience function that owns the foundations connecting local development to production delivery, including CI/CD, build systems, container base images, artifact promotion, and release workflows. It combines hands-on technical leadership with cross-team influence to reduce friction and raise delivery quality across engineering.

Responsibilities

• Define the architecture and roadmap for local development, repository tooling, CI/CD, build systems, and release workflows.
• Lead high-impact initiatives that standardize the path from code change to production and reduce manual coordination.
• Build reusable CI/CD templates, runner capabilities, developer workflows, test gates, artifact promotion paths, release manifests, and rollback procedures.
• Establish sustainable practices for shared container images, build performance, reproducibility, scanning, signing, provenance, and supply-chain security.
• Design safe AI-assisted development workflows that integrate cleanly with code review, testing, scanning, permissions, and auditability.
• Mentor engineers, develop technical owners, and communicate complex decisions across Platform, Security, QA, Product, and Program Management.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in Developer Experience, Developer Productivity, Build/Release Engineering, Platform Engineering, SRE, DevOps, or software engineering with substantial tooling ownership.
• Deep experience designing and operating CI/CD systems, ideally GitLab CI/CD with self-hosted runners.
• Hands-on experience with container builds, Docker or OCI images, artifact repositories, and reproducible builds.
• Strong understanding of Kubernetes-based development or delivery workflows.
• Proficiency in Go and Python for automation, developer tooling, or platform services.
• Demonstrated success leading complex initiatives across multiple teams and driving adoption of shared capabilities, paired with strong written and verbal communication.

Nice to have

• Internal developer platform, paved-road, service-template, or developer-portal experience.
• Shared language or runtime base images, image signing, SBOMs, or provenance-control work.
• Hands-on management of a GitLab Runner fleet at scale.

Benefits and work setup

• Base salary range of $199,750 to $270,000 annually, plus an equity package in the form of stock options for full-time employees.
• Health, vision, and dental insurance for employees and their families, a flexible vacation policy, and generous parental leave.
• Hybrid and remote work arrangements depending on role and location, with occasional travel for company onsite meetings and team collaboration.