Staff Software Engineer – Build Platform

About this role

Staff Software Engineer – Build Platform

Location: Remote (U.S.) or Hybrid (Bay Area Preferred)

Security Requirement: U.S. Citizenship is required due to the nature of RapidFort's work supporting U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and other federal customer engagements.

About RapidFort

RapidFort is redefining software supply chain security.

Modern enterprises spend enormous effort identifying software vulnerabilities. We believe the future isn't finding more vulnerabilities—it's eliminating them automatically.

Our platform transforms vulnerable container images into production-ready, hardened artifacts that dramatically reduce software supply chain risk without requiring application code changes. By combining automated container hardening, vulnerability remediation, runtime intelligence, and policy automation, RapidFort enables engineering teams to deliver secure software faster while reducing operational complexity.

We're solving some of the most challenging problems at the intersection of cybersecurity, Linux, distributed systems, containers, Kubernetes, and cloud infrastructure. If you're passionate about building platforms that power secure software at scale, you'll have an outsized impact here.

The Opportunity

RapidFort's platform is built on one simple idea: software should reach production already secure.

Every day, our build platform transforms thousands of vulnerable open-source container images into hardened, production-ready artifacts that help enterprises and U.S. government agencies dramatically reduce software supply chain risk.

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer – Build Platform to architect, scale, and evolve the systems that make this possible.

This is not a traditional DevOps or CI/CD role.

This is a senior technical leadership position where you'll own one of the most critical engineering platforms at RapidFort. You'll define the architecture behind our distributed build systems, influence engineering direction across multiple teams, and build the automation that powers our products.

You'll work at the intersection of Linux internals, distributed systems, Kubernetes, containers, software supply chain security, and large-scale automation while helping shape the future of RapidFort's engineering platform.

What You'll Do

• Own the architecture and long-term technical strategy for RapidFort's Build Platform.

• Design and operate highly scalable distributed build systems capable of producing and maintaining thousands of production-ready container images.

• Build automated systems for image creation, validation, signing, publishing, and lifecycle management.

• Improve build performance, scalability, reproducibility, reliability, and operational efficiency.

• Design automation that eliminates manual engineering work while improving developer productivity.

• Develop internal tooling and platform services using Python, Bash, and modern cloud-native technologies.

• Solve complex Linux, dependency management, networking, container, and build-system challenges.

• Drive engineering standards around software supply chain integrity, reproducible builds, and platform reliability.

• Partner closely with Platform Engineering, Security Research, Product Engineering, and Infrastructure teams.

• Lead architecture reviews and influence technical decisions across multiple engineering organizations.

• Mentor senior engineers and help raise the technical bar across the company.

• Continuously identify opportunities to simplify systems, improve reliability, and reduce operational overhead.

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, or developer platform experience.

• Demonstrated experience architecting and operating large-scale build platforms or distributed infrastructure.

• U.S. Citizenship required pursuant to applicable federal customer requirements.

• Deep expertise with Linux systems and operating system internals.

• Expert knowledge of Docker, OCI container images, and container ecosystems.

• Strong Python development experience.

• Strong Bash scripting skills.

• Experience designing distributed automation systems and developer platforms.

• Strong Kubernetes experience in production environments.

• Experience operating modern CI/CD platforms such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Buildkite, GitLab CI, or equivalent.

• Strong understanding of software build systems, dependency management, package management, and artifact lifecycle.

• Experience troubleshooting large-scale distributed systems in production.

• Strong Git-based development workflows.

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills with the ability to influence engineering across multiple teams.

• Demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives without direct management responsibility.

Preferred Qualifications

• Go (Golang)

• BuildKit, Bazel, or advanced build optimization techniques

• Terraform or Infrastructure as Code

• AWS, Azure, or GCP

• Helm

• OCI registries and artifact management

• Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)

• Sigstore, Cosign, SLSA, in-toto, SPDX, or CycloneDX

• Prometheus, Grafana, or OpenTelemetry

• Supply chain security, container security, or Kubernetes security

• Experience building internal developer platforms

• Experience working in high-growth startups or cloud infrastructure companies

What Makes You Successful Here

We're looking for engineers who naturally think beyond individual tasks.

You will thrive if you:

• Think in systems rather than tickets.

• Build platforms that other engineers love using.

• Automate repetitive work instead of accepting manual processes.

• Enjoy debugging difficult problems that don't have obvious answers.

• Care deeply about software quality, reliability, scalability, and elegant engineering.

• Take ownership of outcomes rather than simply completing assigned work.

• Raise the technical standards of the engineers around you through c

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