Build and Release Engineer

We are hiring for a Build and Release Engineer opportunity. Role: Build and Release Engineer Location: Remote Position: 1 Work Arrangement: Remote Role Overview We are seeking a Build and Release Engineer with strong hands-on experience in Azure DevOps, source control administration, YAML-based CI/CD pipelines, cross-platform build agents, and artifact management. The ideal candidate will design and maintain secure, reusable, and reliable build and release pipelines, troubleshoot complex build failures, and support end-to-end software delivery across development, testing, staging, and production environments. Mandatory Certification: Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert, including successful completion of AZ-400: Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions and the applicable prerequisite certification. Required Skills - Strong hands-on experience with Azure Repos, Azure Pipelines, and Azure Artifacts, with working knowledge of Azure Boards. - Ability to create and troubleshoot multi-stage YAML pipelines from scratch. - Experience administering Azure Repos permissions, branch policies, pull request rules, and merge strategies. - Experience designing and consuming reusable YAML templates across multiple repositories. - Hands-on experience configuring and maintaining self-hosted build agents on Windows and Linux, including agent pools, toolchains, permissions, and troubleshooting. - Strong Git knowledge, including branching, merging, rebasing, cherry-picking, tagging, conflict resolution, and history recovery. - Proficiency in PowerShell and/or Bash for build and deployment automation. - Practical experience with at least one major build ecosystem: .NET/MSBuild, npm/Node.js, Maven/Gradle, or Python packaging. - Understanding of the end-to-end software build and release lifecycle, artifact versioning, environment promotion, deployment validation, and rollback. - Ability to diagnose failures involving application code, pipeline configuration, dependencies, operating systems, and infrastructure. - Mandatory: Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert certification, including AZ-400 and the applicable prerequisite certification. Preferred Skills - Experience with Docker-based builds and container registries such as Azure Container Registry. - Experience with workload identity federation and managed identities for secure pipeline authentication. - Hands-on experience integrating SonarQube with Azure Pipelines and Azure Repos pull requests, including automated code analysis, pull request decoration, and quality gate enforcement through required status checks and branch policies. - Experience supporting macOS build agents, where required. - Experience maintaining classic Azure DevOps release pipelines and migrating them to multi-stage YAML pipelines. Key Responsibilities Azure Repos Administration and Source Control - Administer Azure Repos repositories, repository permissions, branch security, and access controls. - Define and maintain branching strategies, repository standards, and pull request workflows. - Configure branch policies, including minimum reviewer requirements, automatically included reviewers, pull request build validation, required status checks, comment resolution, and linked work item requirements. - Manage permitted merge strategies, restrictions on direct pushes, and controlled permissions to bypass policies. - Manage pull request completion practices, including squash merges, merge commits, and rebase-based workflows. - Resolve complex merge conflicts and troubleshoot Git history, tagging, and repository issues. - Establish commit, tagging, and versioning standards and manage large files and repository maintenance where needed. Azure Pipelines and Reusable Templates - Design, create, and maintain YAML-based CI/CD pipelines from scratch. - Implement multi-stage pipelines covering build, test, package, publish, and deployment activities. - Design and maintain reusable stage, job, and step templates across repositories. - Configure template parameters, variables, variable groups, conditions, dependencies, and output variables. - Manage shared template repositories, template versioning, and controlled rollout of template changes. - Configure CI triggers, branch and path filters, scheduled runs, pipeline resource triggers, and pull request build validation policies. - Secure pipeline access to repositories, service connections, variable groups, and other protected resources. Cross-Platform Build Agents - Configure and administer Microsoft-hosted and self-hosted build agents and agent pools. - Install, register, configure, and maintain self-hosted agents on Windows and Linux, with macOS support where required. - Provision and maintain SDKs, compilers, package managers, build tools, and other agent dependencies. - Configure agent capabilities and demands, service accounts, permissions, and network access. - Troubleshoot agent availability, toolchain incompatibilities, workspace contamination, connectivity, and platform-specific build failures. - Maintain consistent build environments and appropriate workload isolation. Build Automation and Artifact Management - Automate source checkout, dependency restoration, compilation, unit testing, static analysis, code coverage, packaging, and artifact publication. - Support application build ecosystems such as .NET/MSBuild, npm/Node.js, Maven/Gradle, and Python. - Configure and administer Azure Artifacts feeds, package permissions, upstream sources, retention, and package versioning. - Manage pipeline artifacts and package feeds according to their intended purposes. - Improve build performance through caching, parallel execution, incremental builds, and agent optimization. - Diagnose failed builds, flaky tests, dependency issues, and differences between developer and CI environments. Release and Deployment Management - Build and maintain deployment stages using Azure Pipelines and Azure DevOps Environments. - Configure approvals, checks, deployment conditions, and environment-specific settings. - Promote the same versioned artifacts across development, test, staging, and production environments rather than rebuilding for each environment. - Collaborate with application and platform teams on deployment validation, rollback procedures, and release troubleshooting. - Maintain release documentation and traceability across source commits, builds, artifacts, and deployments. Security, Traceability, and Continuous Improvement - Apply least-privilege access controls to repositories, pipelines, agent pools, feeds, service connections, and environments. - Protect secrets and use approved authentication methods, including workload identity federation and managed identities where supported. - Use Azure Boards work item links to maintain traceability from requirements and changes through pull requests, builds, and releases. - Monitor build success rates, execution times, queue times, and recurring failures, and implement measurable improvements. - Document engineering standards and guide developers on Git workflows, pull requests, pipeline templates, and build troubleshooting. - Collaborate with development, QA, platform, and release teams to deliver reliable, repeatable, secure, and traceable software releases. Education Requirement Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business Administration, or a related field is preferred. Our Perks and Benefits Our benefits and rewards program has been thoughtfully designed to recognize your skills and contributions, elevate your learning experience, and provide care and support for you and your loved ones. We also offer: - Health Insurance with Dental & Vision - 401K Plan - Life Insurance, STD & LTD - Paid Vacations & Holidays - Continuous Skill Based Development and Career Advancement Opportunities