IaaS Release Engineer

This IaaS Release Engineer role requires a background in Software Engineering combined with team leadership skills and a diligence in process definition and improvement. They will be responsible for the lifecycle of the development, review, delivery, and improvement of critical infrastructure. This includes aspects such as hypervisor images, bare-metal firmware, and network marketecture and configuration. As a team leader, identifying where to and how to implement automation will be a key enabler of our success.

This role will support the larger Integrated Combat System (ICS) and lay out and manage the IaaS key Dev Sec Ops  and Continuous Integration / Contrinous Deliver (CI/CD) processes working hand in hand with the NSWC DD Government Technical Direction Agent (TDA). This role will be held accountable for the ability to deliver quality on schedule, a key aspect of which will be forecasting, and collaborative tailoring releases to meet aggressive but realistic goals.

As such experience with PI Planning and Risk management will be beneficial experience to have.

• Team Leadership:
  Build the technical culture, habits, and processes of the team! Lead, coach, and develop a team of multiple engineering groups. Working with the PM, help drive clarity in roles and responsibilities for teams, groups, and individuals. Create a healthy and robust operating rhythm to ensure consistent execution across the IaaS pipeline. Set high standards and drive all to achieve them through positive collaboration.
  
  Interface with Government and other stakeholders in a professional and collaborative way increasing trust and transparency in information and communications. Create a shared release operating cadence that brings clarity to priorities, risks, dependencies, and readiness across teams.

• Build Definition, Scope Control, and Pipeline Management:
  Define, implement, and maintain build and packaging pipelines for bare-metal and virtualized infrastructure components. Standardize the creation of hypervisor installation images (e.g. VMware ESXi, KVM/QEMU) through automated tooling like Hashi Corp Packer. Maintain version-controlled build definitions, ensuring reproducible builds across development, staging, and production environments. Create a shared release operating cadence that brings clarity to priorities, risks, dependencies, and readiness across teams.
  
  Define release readiness criteria, checkpoints, approval workflows, and standard artifacts that improve consistency and auditability

• Artifact & Configuration Management:
  Manage the artifact repository lifecycle (e.g. JFrog Artifactory, Azure, Nexus, GIT) for infrastructure deliverables, including OS images, firmware packages, and custom drivers. Establish and enforce semantic versioning and metadata tagging standards for all infrastructure artifacts. Oversee the distribution and delivery of golden images, firmware updates, and validated configuration baselines to globally distributed data centers. Maintain and deliver version-controlled network configuration files, templates, and structured variables (YAML/JSON) for physical and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) environments.
  
  Ensure network change artifacts are validated for syntax, schema compliance, and security policy adherence prior to push-button deployment.

• Change Management & Release Coordination:
  Act as a key liaison to the Government Stakeholders Configuration Control Board (CCB), coordinating complex infrastructure releases and maintenance windows. Develop detailed roll-out, verification, and roll-back procedures for high-risk infrastructure changes (e.g., hypervisor upgrades, network switch configuration deployments). Lead the team in maintaining comprehensive documentation of release manifests, change logs, and system dependency maps. Oversee release calendars, milestone planning, dependency tracking, and integrated schedules across cloud, mobile, embedded, and firmware delivery streams.
  
  Ensure release plans include quality validation, environment readiness, launch coordination, rollback strategies, and support preparedness, ensuring releases are ready operationally. Support release planning by aligning timing, sequencing, capacity, and organizational interdependencies.

• Lifecycle Management and Data Driven Continuous Improvement:
  Lead post-release reviews, retrospectives, and root cause analysis; use data, trends, and team feedback to strengthen planning, governance, and execution every cycle. Coordinate the testing, packaging, and validation of hardware-level updates, including BIOS/UEFI, Baseboard Management Controllers (CIMC/BMC/IPMI), RAID controllers, and Network Interface Cards (NICs). Identify, assess, and manage release risks, issues, opportunities, dependencies, and operational constraints across a complex portfolio.
  
  Drive proactive mitigation planning throughout the release lifecycle, promoting Risks and Opportunities to leadership alongside plans to address them. Define and operationalize…