Build and Release Engineer (DevOps)

Department: Engineering

Location: Torrance, CA

Compensation: $130K – $197K

Employment Type: FullTime

About Northwood:

Northwood is a modern space infrastructure company bringing the benefits of space to the masses through advanced communications technology. We are building a global network of phased array ground stations that enable real-time, reliable communication for satellite missions such as national security, global connectivity, and disaster response. With a vertically integrated approach, Northwood designs, builds, and rapidly deploys scalable systems that power the next generation of space missions. If you like solving complex challenges and seeing your work deployed around the world with real impact, Northwood is the place to do it.

Role

Northwood's engineers ship software to the cloud and to ground stations in the field. We're looking for a Developer Experience Engineer to own the build system, CI pipelines, test harness integrations, and developer environments that FPGA, embedded, DSP, cloud, and ground teams use every day. You will build the paved paths those teams adopt for their own targets, measure how fast and reliably they get from commit to release, and strive to make that number better. This role sits within the Platform team and works with every engineering discipline at Northwood.

Responsibilities

• Own the build system: reproducibility, caching, build times, and cross-platform targets spanning cloud services, embedded firmware, and FPGA gateware.

• Design and maintain reusable GitLab CI templates and pipeline components, with fast early checks ahead of expensive builds and tests, and drive down flakiness and cycle time with data.

• Build reproducible developer environments so new engineers are productive on day one.

• Implement release automation and promotion mechanics from development through staging to production, including artifact signing and supply chain checks.

• Instrument the build and CI system, publish developer productivity metrics, and use them to prioritize the tooling roadmap.

• Support engineers on build and pipeline issues and turn recurring problems into permanent fixes.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• 3+ years of experience in build engineering, DevOps, CI/CD, developer productivity, or platform engineering.

• Hands-on experience owning CI pipelines (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Buildkite, or similar) for a multi-team codebase.

• Proficiency in Python and shell scripting; ability to read and build Rust or C/C++ projects.

• Solid understanding of containers, Linux, and Git workflows.

• Demonstrated ability to diagnose and fix slow or unreliable builds, with specific examples.

Preferred Qualifications

• Production experience with Nix, OCI, and hermetic build systems.

• Experience with cross-compilation and embedded or FPGA toolchains.

• Experience with remote build caching and distributed builds.

• Familiarity with software supply chain security tooling, SAST, DAST, and SBOMs.

• Exposure to Kubernetes, ArgoCD, or GitOps deployment patterns.

• Experience in a regulated environment (CMMC, NIST 800-171, or similar) where build provenance matters.

Additional Information:

If you need a reasonable accommodation as part of your application for employment or interviews with us, please let us know.

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Northwood Space is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Northwood Space is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.