Release Engineer

Valarian Technologies is a dual-use technology company building critical tools to safeguard the future in an era of evolving global security challenges. We're rethinking security beyond traditional military domains, addressing asymmetric threats that impact our technological advantage, economic strength, and democratic institutions. We build Acra – the platform foundation for everything we do as a dual-use technology company. The platform’s name, rooted in the Greek word for citadel (or, fortress), reflects the design and purpose of our infrastructure-agnostic secure enclaves: protecting critical data.

Some of the government and commercial workflows include:

• Increased operational resiliency for mission-critical systems and functions.
• Enabling organisations to more quickly and widely adopt emerging technologies while ensuring the integrity of their intellectual property.
• Information flow during disaster response scenarios.
• Zero-trust / least-privilege environments for M&A, attorney-client privileged communications, etc.

At our core, we're driven by a shared mission and a belief in making a tangible impact on our world. Whether you join our London HQ or the wider global organisation, you’ll be a part of collaborative, high-performing teams, creating cutting-edge software, platforms, and infrastructure.

The Role: As a Release Engineer at Valarian, you will own the delivery pipelines and release lifecycle for Acra—ensuring our hardened platform can be deployed reliably, predictably, and securely across cloud-native, on-premise, and strictly air-gapped environments. Releasing software at Valarian is not a typical SaaS continuous deployment pipeline. Because Acra operates as an enclave citadel in high-consequence environments (defense, government, and highly regulated enterprise), our releases must meet strict cryptographic verification, zero-trust integrity, and reproducible build standards. You will build and maintain the secure build systems, artifacts, release tooling, and deployment automation that allow engineering teams to ship high‑velocity code without compromising security, compliance, or operational resiliency.

What you’ll do:

• Own the Release Lifecycle: Build, maintain, and optimize CI/CD pipelines and release engineering tooling for the Acra platform stack across multiple environments (multi‑cloud, hybrid, on‑prem, and air‑gapped).
• Architect Air‑Gapped & Offline Packaging: Design reproducible, self‑contained release artifacts (Helm charts, container images, binary bundles) capable of deploying seamlessly into environments with zero internet connectivity.
• Enforce Software Supply Chain Security: Implement cryptographic signing (e.g., Sigstore/Cosign, SLSA provenance), Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) generation, and automated vulnerability gating across all build pipelines.
• Automate Infrastructure‑as‑Code (IaC): Maintain release‑side IaC and GitOps delivery frameworks (ArgoCD, Flux, Terraform) to ensure target environments maintain consistent posture and deterministic updates.
• Streamline Developer Velocity & Reliability: Partner closely with platform, security, and application engineering teams to standardize versioning, branching strategies, and automated testing feedback loops.
• Drive Release Readiness & Auditability: Ensure every Acra platform release produces immutable audit trails, change logs, and evidence artifacts required for government and commercial compliance standards.

What we are looking for:

• 4+ years of professional experience in Release Engineering, DevOps, Platform Engineering, or SRE, with a strong focus on secure software delivery pipelines.
• Deep Cloud‑Native & Kubernetes Expertise: Strong hands‑on experience with Kubernetes orchestration, Helm, container registries, and cloud‑native infrastructure automation.
• Air‑Gapped / Heterogeneous Deployment Experience: Demonstrated experience packaging and releasing software for complex, non‑SaaS deployment environments (on‑premise, edge, or air‑gapped systems).
• Supply Chain Security Fluency: Solid understanding of build integrity concepts, artifact signing, provenance tracking, vulnerability scanning, and SBOM standards.
• CI/CD & GitOps Mastery: Proven experience designing enterprise pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Tekton, ArgoCD) with robust testing, canary/blue‑green strategies, and rollback mechanisms.
• Strong Scripting/Coding Skills: Proficiency in Go, Python, Bash, or Rust for building custom release automation tools and CLI utility workflows.

Nice to have:

• Prior experience working in dual‑use, Defense, Government, Cyber Security, or Regulated Enterprise environments.
• SC or DV clearance eligibility in the UK.
• Experience with cryptographic key management (Vault, KMS) and code‑signing infrastructure.
• Familiarity with zero‑trust networking tools and Kubernetes security operators (Cilium, Istio, Kyverno, SPIRE).

Benefits:

• Equity – because you have the right to own what you’re building.
• A competitive salary – because we value your unique skills.
• Employer pension contributions – because you deserve a secure future.
• Private health insurance - because your health is important to us.
• Hybrid work setup – because everyone has different needs.
• Rewarding company retreats and meetups that respect your work/life balance – because we love getting to know each other!

Life at Valarian: Our culture is built on inclusivity, compassion and flexibility – we want everyone to be empowered to achieve their goals at Valarian. The world is changing, and so is our way of working. If you want to join us in the London office – it’s quite nice! – you’re welcome to; and if you’d prefer to work remotely, that’s fine too. And as we build elegant solutions to simplify the complexities of business collaboration, we also simplify work life: contribute wherever and whenever allows you to be your best self. We trust each other to consistently raise the bar, and we challenge each other to continually reach new heights.