SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Salary: USD 229,500 - 260,000 / annual
Horizon3.ai is a fast-growing remote cybersecurity company building NodeZero, an autonomous penetration testing platform used by organizations from educational institutions to Global 100 enterprises. NodeZero runs as containerized software in customer infrastructure, and this role owns the technical strategy for how the product is built, packaged, and delivered at scale.
As Staff Software Engineer on the Image Build & Release team, you are the technical anchor responsible for the entire pipeline from source code to production container images deployed across thousands of customer environments. This is a hands-on staff-level role where you will write code, produce architecture designs, mentor engineers, and own the most consequential technical decisions for packaging and shipping NodeZero.
Key responsibilities include:
- Design and own the CI/CD pipeline that produces NodeZero container images, from source through signing and scanning to distribution-ready artifacts
- Define image hardening, CVE scanning, and signing strategies to ensure security and compliance requirements are met before shipping
- Partner with the OTA Services team to design reliable and safe update delivery mechanisms for deployed instances, including rollout strategy, rollback, and version pinning
- Set standards for build reproducibility, artifact versioning, and release gating across the Client Platform team
- Mentor mid-level engineers through code review, design review, and architectural pairing
- Own build and release infrastructure end-to-end, including on-call responsibilities for pipeline failures and delivery incidents
You will raise the bar on automation, reliability, and delivery velocity for a team building from a strong starting point. This role reports to the Client Platform Engineering Manager and works directly with the OTA Services team.
Requirements:
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with deep specialization in build systems, CI/CD, or release engineering for containerized applications
- Expert-level knowledge of Docker and container image construction (multi-stage builds, base image selection, layer optimization, image hardening)
- Experience with container image signing and verification (Cosign, Notary, or equivalent) and image scanning toolchains (Trivy, Grype, Snyk, or equivalent)
- Strong track record building and operating CI/CD pipelines at scale (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Tekton, or equivalent)
- Deep understanding of Kubernetes (image pulling, versioning, updates in running clusters)
- Experience designing and operating OTA or remote update systems (rollout strategies, delta delivery, version negotiation, rollback)
- Proficiency in Go, Python, or shell scripting to build and maintain pipeline tooling
- Experience with artifact registries (ECR, GCR, Docker Hub, Harbor) and artifact lifecycle management
- Track record of setting engineering standards that other engineers adopt
- Ability to produce clear architecture documents and drive technical decisions across team boundaries
- Experience mentoring mid-level engineers through design and code review
Nice to haves: experience with secure software supply chain practices (SLSA, SBOM generation, provenance attestation), background in cybersecurity or building software for sensitive customer environments (on-prem, air-gapped, regulated industries), experience with Helm chart packaging and Kubernetes operator patterns, familiarity with eBPF or kernel-level tooling for containerized security software.
Up to 5% travel may be required. Minimum 25 Mbps consumer-grade broadband connection required.
