Senior Build Engineer

Our Mission

Our mission is to solve the most important and fundamental challenges in AI and Robotics to enable future generations of intelligent machines that will help us all live better lives.

Overview

The Build Engineer will be an integral member of the team responsible for developing, supporting, and maintaining the build system and continuous integration (CI) processes at the Robotics and AI Institute. This role is critical to the Institute's success, ensuring that the codebase remains stable and builds are efficient. You will develop, support, and maintain the build system (with a strong focus on tools like Bazel, CMake, and Colcon) and continuous integration processes.

The ideal candidate will focus on constructing reproducible builds for rapid iteration, creating maintainable build artifacts, and managing dependencies, all of which are essential for sustained productivity across the Institute.

Responsibilities

• This role focuses on build system tooling and software compilation, not infrastructure provisioning or production deployment pipelines
• Design, develop, and maintain a company-wide build system and continuous integration (CI) infrastructure for both internal and external repositories, ensuring reliable and reproducible builds
• Collaborate with research and development teams to integrate software and third-party libraries into the build system
• Drive release engineering efforts, including packaging, deployment, and version management
• Maintain and evolve version control workflows, ensuring efficient branching, merging, and code review processes
• Troubleshoot and resolve build failures, dependency conflicts, and CI-related issues
• Implement and optimize build pipelines for speed, reliability, and scalability
• Manage and maintain build artifacts, ensuring they are reproducible, versioned, and easily accessible
• Develop and maintain automated testing frameworks within the CI pipeline to ensure code quality
• Monitor, profile, and improve build performance (e.g., incremental build times, cache effectiveness, dependency graph complexity
• Provide informal technical leadership within the build, CI domain and developer experience, sharing best practices, reviewing code, and mentoring junior engineers or researchers who interact with the build system

Qualifications

• BS or MS in Computer Science or equivalent experience
• 7+ years of experience in software development. 3+ years of experience in Linux build/release engineering
• Strong experience with build automation tools (e.g., Bazel, CMake, Colcon), including deep understanding of compilation pipelines, dependency graphs, and build system performance tuning
• Experience with modern C++ (C++17 or later) and Python, particularly in the context of building, linking, and packaging large code bases
• Experience with dependency management tools (e.g., pip, poetry).Knowledge of Debian packaging systems
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills
• Strong documentation practices for build processes and CI/CD pipelines
• A collaborative mindset, with interest in mentoring others and supporting team-wide growth in build and CI expertise

Bonus

• Experience with Git Hub Enterprise, Google Artifact Registry, or other artifact management platforms including artifact versioning, traceability, and reproducibility best practices
• Hands on experience with ROS/ROS2 in a robotics environment
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and container orchestration, particularly as it relates to managing builds and deployments of complex systems
• Familiarity with cross-compilation and build systems for embedded systems or specialized hardware
• Background in real-time systems, with exposure to deterministic build requirements and RTOS-specific build workflows

$128,100 - $237,900 a year

The current reasonable and good faith estimate of the annual base salary range for this position is $128,100 - $237,900, which is based on a number of factors including, but not limited to, relevant skills and experience, educational background and certifications, performance and qualifications, market demand for the role, geographic location, and other organizational needs. An individual candidate may be considered for this position at a…