Staff Developer Experience Engineer

About the Role

We are looking for a Staff Developer Experience Engineer to help shape how Horizon3 engineers build, test, release, and operate software.

The Developer Experience team owns the foundations connecting local development to production delivery: developer tooling, CI/CD, build systems, container base images, artifact promotion, release gates, and approved agentic-development workflows. You will define technical direction, lead complex initiatives across engineering, and build reusable paths that improve delivery speed, quality, security, and confidence.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an engineer who enjoys solving ambiguous problems, influencing across teams, and making the software lifecycle easier to use and operate.

What You’ll Do

Developer Platform Strategy, Delivery & Operations

• Define the architecture and roadmap for local development, repository tooling, CI/CD, build systems, and release workflows.

• Lead high-impact initiatives across engineering that reduce manual coordination and standardize the path from code change to production.

• Build reusable GitLab CI/CD templates, runner capabilities, developer workflows, test gates, artifact promotion, release manifests, and rollback paths.

• Establish sustainable practices for shared container images, build performance, reproducibility, scanning, signing, provenance, and supply-chain security.

• Improve developer workflow and delivery observability through useful measures of setup time, pipeline health, release performance, and adoption.

• Partner with Platform, Security, QA, and feature teams to make delivery foundations reliable, secure, and easy to consume.

Technical Leadership & Enablement

• Establish standards and paved paths for developer workflows, build and release engineering, and approved AI-assisted development.

• Design safe agentic-development workflows that integrate with code review, testing, scanning, permissions, auditability, and Security requirements.

• Turn repeated developer friction into reusable tooling, templates, documentation, migration guidance, and runbooks.

• Mentor engineers, develop technical owners, and raise the engineering bar across Developer Experience and Horizon3.

• Communicate complex technical decisions clearly and build alignment across Platform, Application Engineering, Data Engineering, Security, QA, Product, and Program Management.

• Participate in design reviews, operational reviews, incident response, and continuous improvement.

What You’ll Bring

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in Developer Experience, Developer Productivity, Build/Release Engineering, Platform Engineering, SRE, DevOps, or software engineering with substantial tooling and delivery ownership.

• Deep experience designing and operating CI/CD systems, preferably GitLab CI/CD and self-hosted runners.

• Experience with container builds, Docker or OCI images, artifact repositories, and reproducible builds.

• Strong understanding of Kubernetes-based development or delivery workflows.

• Experience implementing automated tests, security checks, release gates, progressive delivery, and rollback.

• Proficiency in Go and Python for automation, developer tooling, or platform services.

• Strong understanding of software supply-chain security, dependencies, image vulnerabilities, provenance, secrets, and least privilege.

• Demonstrated success leading complex initiatives across multiple teams and driving adoption of shared capabilities.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• Experience mentoring engineers and influencing technical direction without relying on formal authority.

Preferred Qualifications

• Internal developer platform, paved-road, service-template, or developer-portal experience.

• Shared language/runtime base images, image signing, SBOMs, or provenance-control experience.

• GitLab Runner fleets, CI optimization, build caching, or multi-repository release-system experience.

• Local Kubernetes, dev containers, Docker Compose, Orbstack, Skaffold, ArgoCD, or GitOps experience.

• AI-assisted or agentic engineering workflow experience.

• OpenTelemetry, Datadog, pipeline telemetry, or developer-productivity metrics experience.

• Security-sensitive, regulated, or cybersecurity experience.

Our Developer Experience Stack

• GitLab, GitLab CI/CD, and private runner fleets

• Shared CI/CD templates and pipeline management

• Docker/OCI images, artifact repositories, and shared base images

• Kubernetes, EKS, Helm, Skaffold, and ArgoCD

• AWS and cloud-native development environments

• Go, Python, TypeScript, shell scripting, and repository tooling

• OpenTelemetry, Datadog, and pipeline/deployment observability

• Approved AI coding tools, including Claude Code for approved engineering use cases

Exact tool matches are less important than strong software-engineering fundamentals, platform judgment, empathy for developers, and a track record of improving delivery systems at scale.

What Success Looks Like

• Engineering teams adopt clear, reliable paved paths from local development through production.

• Shared CI/CD, build, and release capabilities reduce friction and manual coordination.

• The same validated artifact or commit moves predictably through environments.

• Base images, build components, and delivery workflows are secure, current, traceable, and easy to consume.

• Approved AI-assisted workflows improve productivity without bypassing review, testing, or security.

• Developer Experience has clear standards, strong adoption, measurable outcomes, and multiple technical owners.

• You are trusted across Engineering to lead difficult developer-workflow and delivery decisions.

Why Join Us

You’ll shape the engineering system behind a rapidly evolving cybersecurity product used by organizations around the world. Your work will improve how every engineering team builds and operates NodeZero while establishing a new, high-leverage technical function at Horizon3.

Travel

Occasional travel may be required for company onsite meetings and team collaboration.

Perks of Horizon3

• Inclusive Team: We value diversity and promote an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive.

• Base salary range: $199,750 - $270,000 annually. The exact salary will be determined based on the selected candidate’s location, qualifications, experience, and relevant skills.

You Belong Here

Horizon3 is not just an equal opportunity employer - we are a community that values diversity, equity, and inclusion as fundamental principles of our culture and success. We are dedicated to fostering a workplace where everyone feels welcome and respected, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, or any other legally protected status by law.