Staff Software Engineer, Image Build & Release

horizon3ai; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote work

Stock options

Health, dental, and vision coverage

Flexible vacation

Parental leave

Job summary

Horizon3ai is seeking a hands-on engineering leader to design, implement, and operate scalable build and release systems for containerized software in customer environments. You will own the CI/CD pipeline, enforce image signing and hardening, and mentor engineers on best practices.

This fully remote role requires deep experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and secure update delivery at scale, plus the ability to drive release governance across large deployments.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering with emphasis on build systems or CI/CD.
• Expert Docker image construction and multi-stage builds.
• Experience with container signing, vulnerability scanning, and image verification.
• Proven record of scaling CI/CD pipelines and Kubernetes image updates.

Responsibilities

• Design and operate the CI/CD pipeline that turns source code into signed, scanned container images.
• Set image hardening, vulnerability scanning, and signing practices to meet security and compliance needs.
• Partner with the update services team on safe delivery to deployed instances, including rollout, rollback, and version pinning.
• Establish standards for reproducible builds, artifact versioning, and release gates.
• Mentor engineers through code and design reviews, and lead complex systems decisions.
• Own build and release operations, responding to pipeline failures, performance regressions, and delivery incidents.

Skills

CI/CD architecture

Mentorship

Release engineering

System design

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Image signing tools

Vulnerability scanning tools

Job description

Role overview

Lead the engineering work that packages and delivers containerized software to customer environments. This hands‑on staff role combines architecture, implementation, and technical mentorship, with responsibility for making builds secure and reproducible and updates dependable across large deployments.

Responsibilities

• Design and operate the CI/CD pipeline that turns source code into signed, scanned container images.
• Set image hardening, vulnerability scanning, and signing practices to meet security and compliance needs.
• Partner with the update services team on safe delivery to deployed instances, including rollout, rollback, and version pinning.
• Establish standards for reproducible builds, artifact versioning, and release gates.
• Mentor engineers through code and design reviews, and lead complex systems decisions.
• Own build and release operations, responding to pipeline failures, performance regressions, and delivery incidents.

Requirements

• At least eight years of professional software engineering experience, with deep expertise in build systems, CI/CD, or container release engineering.
• Expert knowledge of Docker image construction, including multi-stage builds, base image selection, layer optimization, and hardening.
• Experience with container signing and verification, plus image vulnerability scanning tools.
• A record of building and operating CI/CD pipelines at scale.
• Deep understanding of Kubernetes image use, versioning, and updates in running clusters.
• Experience designing and operating over-the-air or remote update systems.

Benefits and work setup

• Fully remote work; a broadband connection of at least 25 Mbps is required.
• The role may include stock options. Health, vision, and dental coverage, flexible vacation, and parental leave are described as available.