Software Engineer III - Release Engineering

About the role

Business Unit: Cubic Defense

Company Details

We are seeking a junior-to-mid-level software engineer to own and improve the release process for a distributed software platform, coordinating its releases with the broader product release cycle.

The platform comprises a web-based control plane, runtime services, platform adapters, deployment charts, supporting components, and shared contract libraries. This engineer will work across those components to assemble, validate, document, and deliver reliable releases.

This role is well suited to an engineer who enjoys automation, systems integration, and making complex release processes predictable. The successful candidate will initially execute releases with support from senior engineers and progressively assume end-to-end ownership.

Job Details

We are seeking an experienced, self-directed software engineer to own and improve the release process for a distributed software platform, coordinating its releases with the broader product release cycle.

The platform comprises a web-based control plane, runtime services, platform adapters, deployment charts, supporting components, and shared contract libraries. This engineer will work independently across those components to assemble, validate, document, and deliver reliable releases, exercising sound technical judgment and coordinating with component owners as needed.

This role is well suited to a self-starter who enjoys automation, systems integration, and making complex release processes predictable. The successful candidate will assume end-to-end release ownership, proactively resolve issues, and provide technical coverage for senior engineers within the release-engineering scope when needed.

Key Responsibilities

• Independently investigate and fix software defects and update dependencies to address security vulnerabilities, assessing the impact on release stability.
• Own the planning and execution of platform releases in coordination with the broader product release schedule.
• Coordinate versioning and release readiness across repositories, services, deployment charts, container images, and supporting components, proactively resolving dependency and readiness gaps.
• Own and maintain release branches, tags, changelogs, release notes, and supporting documentation to ensure consistency and traceability.
• Design, build, and improve CI/CD automation for compiling, testing, packaging, publishing, and deploying releases.
• Plan and execute release validation in representative environments before promotion, evaluating results and addressing readiness concerns.
• Verify compatibility among control-plane services, runtime components, platform adapters, shared contracts, and supported integrations, identifying and coordinating resolution of cross-component issues.
• Track and assess dependencies and component revisions included in each release, identifying changes that create compatibility or delivery risk.
• Coordinate with engineers, product owners, quality teams, platform teams, and other stakeholders to align release scope, timing, and readiness, resolving issues within the role's scope and escalating broader decisions.
• Independently investigate failed builds, deployments, and release-validation tests, identify root causes, and drive corrective action with the appropriate component owners.
• Develop and maintain documentation for known issues, upgrade requirements, rollback procedures, and operational considerations, using release findings to improve guidance.
• Establish and improve repeatable release checklists, quality gates, and readiness reporting, applying technical judgment to identify risks and recommend release actions.
• Proactively identify manual release steps, prioritize improvements, and incrementally replace them with safe, maintainable automation.
• Own post-release verification and independently resolve or appropriately escalate release-related issues, providing release-engineering coverage for senior teammates when needed.

Required Qualifications

• A minimum of 4 years of professional software engineering, DevOps, platform engineering, or release engineering experience.
• Ability to obtain a security clearance
• Strong working knowledge of Git, branching, tagging, pull requests, and structured versioning.
• Hands-on experience building, maintaining, and troubleshooting CI/CD systems and automated build or deployment pipelines.
• Working knowledge of containers and modern deployment environments.
• Ability to independently read, troubleshoot, and make changes to code in at least one modern programming language.
• Experience working independently across multiple repositories and assessing dependencies between components.
• Experience diagnosing complex build, test, configuration, or deployment failures and driving issues through resolution.
• Strong written communication, attention to detail, and ability to clearly communicate technical risks and recommended actions.
• Ability to independently own an established release process, exercise sound judgment, and implement practical improvements.
• Ability to proactively coordinate work across multiple engineering teams and release schedules, following through on dependencies and commitments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Kubernetes, deployment charts, container registries, and image promotion.
• Familiarity with backend, frontend, or systems programming languages and frameworks.
• Experience maintaining release notes, upgrade documentation, or deployment runbooks.
• Familiarity with API contracts, service interfaces, and distributed systems.
• Experience with integration or end-to-end testing in containerized environments.
• Exposure to software supply-chain practices such as dependency scanning, artifact signing, SBOM generation, or vulnerability management.
• Experience taking ownership of coordinated releases across related products or platforms.

Cubic Pay Range

$92,000.00 - $105,000.00 + benefits.

The Cubic pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.

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