Release Engineer

About the role

This position centers on the operational execution of software releases and upgrades for Jito's infrastructure. The role requires owning the entire release checklist, from preflight validation through deployment, real-time monitoring, and post-release follow-up. This includes managing testnet upgrades, mainnet canaries, staged rollouts, and patches in a high-stakes environment.

A key aspect of the work involves maintaining accurate and usable release playbooks, runbooks, and deployment checklists, as well as rollback procedures. The Release Engineer will also be responsible for coordinating version and configuration consistency across different environments, services, and repositories. Real-time monitoring of releases using dashboards, logs, alerts, and service-level health checks is a continuous responsibility.

The role also includes contributing to incremental improvements in CI/CD, automation, and tooling. Success in this position means ensuring smooth, reliable, and consistent software deployments, minimizing risks, and efficiently managing the release lifecycle for Jito's products, which process significant daily transaction value on the Solana network.

The salary for this role is listed between $180,000 and $200,000 USD.

Skills that matter here

• Linux: Experience with Linux production deployment workflows is required for managing infrastructure releases.
• Git: Familiarity with Git-based release workflows, including version management, branching, and tagging, is essential for coordinating releases.
• Rust: While not explicitly detailed, Rust is part of the stack, suggesting interaction with Rust-based systems during releases.
• Terraform: Terraform is listed in the stack, indicating its use in infrastructure as code which the release engineer may interact with.
• Ansible: Ansible is part of the stack, suggesting its use in automation and configuration management relevant to releases.
• Grafana: Grafana is used for monitoring, which is critical for observing releases in real time.

Who this role suits

• A person with at least four years of experience in release engineering, SRE, or similar production infrastructure roles.
• Someone who takes high ownership of their work and is comfortable operating autonomously within a small team.
• An individual experienced with canary rollouts, rollback procedures, and incident response in production environments.
• A candidate who can effectively coordinate across multiple repositories and manage version consistency.

From the employer

Responsibilities

• Own and execute software upgrades and releases across Jito infrastructure, including testnet upgrades, mainnet canaries, staged rollouts, and patches.
• Own the operational release checklist from preflight validation through deployment, monitoring, rollback readiness, and post-release follow-up.
• Keep release playbooks, runbooks, deployment checklists, and rollback procedures accurate and usable.
• Coordinate version/config consistency across environments, services, and repositories.
• Monitor releases in real time using dashboards, logs, alerts, and service-level health checks.
• Contribute to incremental CI/CD, automation, and tooling improvements.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in release engineering, deployment engineering, SRE, infrastructure engineering, DevOps, platform engineering, or similar production infrastructure roles.
• High ownership and comfort working autonomously on a small team.
• Experience with linux production deployment workflows, canary rollouts, rollback procedures, incident response, and operational monitoring.
• Familiarity with Git-based release workflows, version management, branching, tagging, changelogs, and cross-repo coordination.

Benefits

• Above market compensation and multiple forms of equity
• 100% of employee health benefits covered by employer
• All-expenses-paid team retreats and conferences
• Generous PTO
• Weekly meal voucher