Staff Software Engineer, Image Build & Release

About this role

Get to Know Us

Horizon3 http://Horizon3.ai is a fast-growing, remote cybersecurity company dedicated to the mission of enabling organizations to proactively find, fix and verify exploitable attack vectors before criminals exploit them. Our flagship product, the NodeZero™ platform, delivers production-safe autonomous pentests and other key assessment operations that scale across the largest internal, external, cloud, and hybrid cloud environments. NodeZero has been adopted by organizations of all sizes, from small educational institutions to government agencies and Global 100 enterprises. It is used by IT Ops/SecOps teams, consulting pentesters, and MSSPs and MSPs.

We are a fusion of former U.S. Special Operations cyber operators, startup engineers & operators, and formerly frustrated cybersecurity practitioners. We're committed to helping solve our common security problems: ineffective security tools and false positives, resulting in alert fatigue, blind spots, "checkbox" security culture, cybersecurity skills shortage, and the long lead time and expense of hiring outside consultants. Collectively, we are a team of learn-it-alls, committed to a culture of respect, collaboration, ownership, and results.

As a remote first company, we require minimum 25Mbps consumer grade broadband connection.

What You'll Do

The Expert Engineer on the Image Build & Release team is the technical anchor for how NodeZero gets built and delivered to customer environments. NodeZero runs as a container in customer infrastructure — building that image correctly, delivering it reliably, and updating it safely across thousands of deployments is a hard systems problem with direct customer impact. You will set the technical direction for the build pipeline, the image signing and scanning strategy, and the OTA (over-the-air) delivery infrastructure that pushes updates to deployed NodeZero instances.

This is a hands-on staff-level role. You will write code, produce architecture designs, mentor engineers, and own the most consequential technical decisions for how NodeZero is packaged and shipped. The team is building from a strong starting point — you will raise the bar on automation, reliability, and delivery velocity. This role reports to the Client Platform Engineering Manager and works directly with the OTA Services team on the delivery side.

Responsibilities

- Build Pipeline Architecture: Design and own the CI/CD pipeline that produces NodeZero container images — from source to signed, scanned artifact ready for distribution

- Image Integrity & Security: Define the image hardening, CVE scanning, and signing strategy that ensures NodeZero images meet security and compliance requirements before they ship

- OTA Delivery Infrastructure: Partner with the OTA Services team to design the delivery mechanism that pushes image updates to customer-deployed NodeZero instances reliably and safely — including rollout strategy, rollback, and version pinning

- Release Engineering Standards: Set standards for build reproducibility, artifact versioning, and release gating that the full Client Platform team follows

- Mentorship: Mentor P4 engineers through code review, design review, and architectural pairing; be the person the team turns to when they hit a hard systems problem

- Operational Excellence: Own the build and release infrastructure end-to-end — on-call for pipeline failures, build time regressions, and delivery incidents

What You'll Bring

Build & Release Engineering

- 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)

Systems & Delivery

- Deep understanding of Kubernetes — how images are pulled, versioned, and updated 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 sufficient to build and maintain pipeline tooling

- Experience with artifact registries (ECR, GCR, Docker Hub, Harbor) and artifact lifecycle management

Technical Leadership

- Track record of setting engineering standards that other engineers adopt — not just writing good code but making the right approach the obvious one

- 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 that runs in sensitive customer environments (on-prem, air-gapped, or regulated industries)

- Experience with Helm chart packaging and Kubernetes operator patterns

- Familiarity with eBPF or kernel-level tooling relevant to containerized security software

Travel Required

We are a fully remote company, and this job may require up to 5% of travel to be successful.

Compensation and Values

At Horizon3, we believe that our people are our greatest asset, and our compensation philosophy reflects this core value. We are committed to fostering an environment where all employees feel valued, respected, and rewarded for their contributions. Our compensation structure is designed to be fair, competitive, and transparent, ensuring that every team member is recognized and compensated equitably across roles, levels, and locations.

In accordance with various…