Software Engineer I/II - Release Engineering

United States, Virginia, Ashburn 21580 Beaumeade Circle (Show on map) Sep 21, 2026 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:

Key Responsibilities

• Fix software defects and update dependencies to address security vulnerabilities.
• Plan and execute 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.
• Maintain release branches, tags, changelogs, release notes, and supporting documentation.
• Build and improve CI/CD automation for compiling, testing, packaging, publishing, and deploying releases.
• Validate releases in representative environments before promotion.
• Verify compatibility among control-plane services, runtime components, platform adapters, shared contracts, and supported integrations.
• Track dependencies and component revisions included in each release.
• Coordinate with engineers, product owners, quality teams, platform teams, and other stakeholders on release scope and timing.
• Investigate failed builds, deployments, and release-validation tests.
• Document known issues, upgrade requirements, rollback procedures, and operational considerations.
• Establish repeatable release checklists, quality gates, and readiness reporting.
• Identify manual release steps and incrementally replace them with safe automation.
• Participate in post-release verification and resolve or escalate release-related issues.

• Approximately 2 -4 years of professional software engineering, DevOps, platform engineering, or release engineering experience.
• Ability to obtain a security clearance
• Working knowledge of Git, branching, tagging, pull requests, and structured versioning.
• Experience with CI/CD systems and automated build or deployment pipelines.
• Familiarity with containers and modern deployment environments.
• Ability to read and troubleshoot code in at least one modern programming language.
• Comfort working across multiple repositories and tracking dependencies between components.
• Experience diagnosing build, test, configuration, or deployment failures.
• Strong written communication and attention to detail.
• Ability to follow an established release process while identifying practical improvements.
• Willingness to coordinate work across multiple engineering teams and release schedules.

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 supporting coordinated releases across related products or platforms.