Staff Build Engineer

RapidFort builds hardened, production-ready container images and automation for enterprises and U.S. government agencies. The Staff Build Engineer will own the build pipelines and automation systems, ensuring reliability and efficiency in the build process while collaborating closely with engineering teams.

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

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