What are the responsibilities and job description for the DevOps Engineer position at Merlin?
About Merlin:
Merlin is a venture backed aerospace startup building a non-human pilot to enable both reduced crew and uncrewed flight. Backed by some of the world’s leading investors, Merlin is scaling alongside our customers to begin leveraging autonomy today to solve some of aviation’s biggest challenges.
About You:
You are a DevOps engineer who lives and breathes CI/CD. You get excited about making builds faster, deployments more reliable, and test pipelines more comprehensive. You'd rather automate a task once than do it manually twice. You have solid experience with Linux, Git, Docker, and at least one CI/CD platform, and you're comfortable working across multiple codebases and teams.
You want to work on something more interesting than a typical SaaS platform — at Merlin, the software you help deploy goes onto aircraft. And unlike most DevOps roles, there is no on-call rotation — nights and weekends are yours.
Responsibilities:
Once you’re here, you’ll enjoy a variety of on-site perks designed to make your workday enjoyable and convenient. These include catered lunches featuring a rotating menu of delicious options, an assortment of snacks to keep you fueled throughout the day, and a selection of beverages, including coffee, tea, and other drinks, to keep you refreshed.
Our goal is to create an environment where you can thrive both professionally and personally
Merlin Labs offers an innovative, entrepreneurial, and team-focused startup environment. We also offer a top-notch benefits package (health, dental, life, unlimited vacation, and 401k with match) and work/life integration. Being part of the Merlin team allows you to become part of a small team that supports professional development while working together to achieve our mission.
Merlin Labs is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy), gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, military service or obligation or disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law. All job offers are contingent upon the candidate passing background and reference checks.
At this time, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship or consider candidates who require visa transfers. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for visa sponsorship now or in the future.
In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire.
If you require reasonable accommodation in completing an application, interviewing, completing any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participating in the employee selection process, please direct your inquiries to: people@merlinlabs.com
Merlin Labs does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than directly from candidates.
Merlin is a venture backed aerospace startup building a non-human pilot to enable both reduced crew and uncrewed flight. Backed by some of the world’s leading investors, Merlin is scaling alongside our customers to begin leveraging autonomy today to solve some of aviation’s biggest challenges.
About You:
You are a DevOps engineer who lives and breathes CI/CD. You get excited about making builds faster, deployments more reliable, and test pipelines more comprehensive. You'd rather automate a task once than do it manually twice. You have solid experience with Linux, Git, Docker, and at least one CI/CD platform, and you're comfortable working across multiple codebases and teams.
You want to work on something more interesting than a typical SaaS platform — at Merlin, the software you help deploy goes onto aircraft. And unlike most DevOps roles, there is no on-call rotation — nights and weekends are yours.
Responsibilities:
- CI/CD Pipelines — Design, build, and improve CI/CD pipelines across multiple interdependent systems using GitHub Actions. Ensure builds are fast, reliable, and produce correct artifacts
- Testing Infrastructure — Design and maintain test automation frameworks — including smoke tests, integration tests, and deployment validation — for software that targets physical hardware, not just cloud services. Drive testing coverage and reliability across unique deployment targets
- Deployment Automation — Automate software packaging and deployment to test systems, bench hardware, and flight test aircraft using Docker, Debian packaging, Ansible, and JFrog Artifactory
- Artifact Management — Maintain and operate JFrog Artifactory repositories, including promotion pipelines, access control, and CLI tooling for downstream consumers
- Cross-Team Collaboration — Work with flight software engineers, test pilots, and IT to ensure tooling and infrastructure support development through flight test. Communicate clearly and document processes to drive adoption
- Process Improvement — Identify bottlenecks in the development and release process, propose solutions, and implement them. Contribute to SDLC maturity and DevOps best practices
- 1-3 years of experience in DevOps, Platform Engineering, Site Reliability, or a related role
- Strong experience with CI/CD platforms — GitHub Actions preferred; Jenkins, GitLab CI, or CircleCI also acceptable
- Experience designing and building test pipelines — writing test jobs, managing test fixtures, interpreting and acting on failures
- Solid experience with Linux system administration (Ubuntu preferred)
- Proficiency with Docker for building, publishing, and deploying container images
- Strong scripting skills in Python and Bash
- Comfortable with Git workflows — branching strategies, tagging, release management
- Familiarity with artifact repositories — JFrog Artifactory, Nexus, or similar package/container registries
- Working experience with AWS (EC2, IAM, S3, ECR) and Microsoft Azure — AWS is our primary cloud for engineering infrastructure; both platforms are part of the day-to-day job
- Experience with configuration management tools — Ansible preferred; Chef, Puppet, or similar also acceptable — including managing software and configuration state across physical systems and embedded hardware targets (e.g., bench hardware, flight test aircraft), not just cloud or server infrastructure
- Strong problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and ability to work independently
- Excellent communication and documentation skills
- Experience with Debian packaging (dpkg, dch, Launchpad PPAs, or S3-hosted APT repos)
- Experience with software products that include a physical systems component — aircraft, robotics, medical devices, autonomous vehicles, or similar
- Familiarity with distributed pub/sub frameworks (e.g., ROS2) and underlying middleware such as DDS and Zenoh
- Knowledge of networking fundamentals and network security best practices
- Experience working in a regulated environment (aerospace, automotive, medical) where traceability and process compliance matter
- Experience with government-aligned or compliance-driven cloud environments — Azure Government, GCC High, FedRAMP, or similar
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools — Terraform, CloudFormation, or Pulumi
- Familiarity with security scanning tools — SAST, SCA, SBOM generation, or container scanning
- Experience working in GCC High (Microsoft Azure Government Community Cloud) or other FedRAMP/DoD-compliant cloud environments
- Familiarity with dev containers and containerized development environments
- Familiarity with orchestration techniques for automated regression and simulation-level integration testing (e.g., ReSim or similar frameworks)
Once you’re here, you’ll enjoy a variety of on-site perks designed to make your workday enjoyable and convenient. These include catered lunches featuring a rotating menu of delicious options, an assortment of snacks to keep you fueled throughout the day, and a selection of beverages, including coffee, tea, and other drinks, to keep you refreshed.
Our goal is to create an environment where you can thrive both professionally and personally
Merlin Labs offers an innovative, entrepreneurial, and team-focused startup environment. We also offer a top-notch benefits package (health, dental, life, unlimited vacation, and 401k with match) and work/life integration. Being part of the Merlin team allows you to become part of a small team that supports professional development while working together to achieve our mission.
Merlin Labs is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy), gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, military service or obligation or disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law. All job offers are contingent upon the candidate passing background and reference checks.
At this time, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship or consider candidates who require visa transfers. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for visa sponsorship now or in the future.
In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire.
If you require reasonable accommodation in completing an application, interviewing, completing any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participating in the employee selection process, please direct your inquiries to: people@merlinlabs.com
Merlin Labs does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than directly from candidates.