Software Engineer, Developer Infrastructure - Build Systems

About Nominal

Nominal is building the connected test and operations platform powering the world's most advanced hardware systems, from spacecraft and autonomous vehicles to next-generation defense programs. Our platform gives hardware engineering teams a single place to ingest data, analyze performance, automate test execution, and collaborate across every phase of development, so they can move faster without sacrificing safety or precision. We're a fast-moving team that owns problems end-to-end, works across disciplines, and thrives at the intersection of hardware and software.

We serve top-tier commercial and defense customers, from autonomy leaders like Anduril and Shield AI to next-generation aerospace teams like Hermeus and REGENT, and performance engineering teams like Pratt Miller Motorsports, alongside mission partners within the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force on programs where failure isn’t an option. We’re backed by Sequoia, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and Lightspeed. Our team draws from SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, Applied Intuition, and other leading companies, united by a common mission: giving hardware engineers the tools to build the future with speed, safety, and confidence.

We're looking for a Software Engineer to join Nominal's Developer Infrastructure team. You'll develop the build infrastructure that every engineer at Nominal depends on, with an eye towards continuously optimizing the build performance and local devx to better scale with our growing engineering organization. You'll also own the developer infrastructure that keeps engineering velocity and release quality high, such as observability, pre-merge validation, and more. As one of the founding engineers on the team, you'll shape the tooling, developer experience, and engineering practices that every engineer at Nominal relies on from day one

About The Role

• Build, optimize, and maintain Nominal's large-scale build systems, with Bazel as the highest priority.
• Improve CI/CD pipeline performance, release automation, and release reliability.
• Own developer infrastructure that enables engineering velocity as our monorepo and engineering organization scale.
• Build and maintain observability, telemetry, logging, and metrics infrastructure using tools like Datadog, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry.
• Partner closely with product engineering teams to remove developer friction and improve day-to-day engineering productivity.

Skills That Accelerate Us

• 4+ years building, optimizing, and maintaining build systems at scale.
• Experience with Bazel or similar build systems.
• Experience working in and scaling large monorepos.
• A track record of improving CI/CD performance, release reliability, and developer productivity using measurable outcomes.
• Practical, startup-minded engineering philosophy - You don't let perfect be the enemy of good, but you approach problems from first principles and build solutions that scale.
• Comfortable owning developer infrastructure end to end, from build tooling and CI/CD to release automation and engineering productivity.

Nice to have:

• Datadog
• Grafana
• OpenTelemetry
• Audit logging
• Kubernetes
• Remote build caches
• Ephemeral development environments, or other developer platform tooling.

Benefits/Perks

• 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Unlimited PTO and sick leave
• Free lunch, snacks, and coffee
• Professional Development Stipend
• In-office hardware lab with a $250 project stipend
• Annual company retreat

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.

ITAR Requirements

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.

Compensation

The base pay range for this role is $130,000 - $230,000 per year.