What are the responsibilities and job description for the DevOps Engineer position at Xona Space Systems, Inc?
Xona is the navigational intelligence company bringing real-time, centimeter-level certainty to any device, anywhere on Earth.
With Pulsar - the world's most advanced PNT satellite infrastructure in Low Earth Orbit - Xona will offer a future-proof, backwards-compatible global positioning system optimized for absolute precision, superior power, and robust protection.
As a DevOps Engineer, you'll build and operate the delivery infrastructure that turns embedded and flight-adjacent software into reliable, traceable, test-validated releases. You'll partner with engineering teams to standardize CI/CD, automate test execution (including hardware-in-the-loop where applicable), and ensure high confidence in every change that reaches integration and flight readiness milestones.
What You'll Do
Required Qualifications
For U.K. Roles: To comply with U.K. regulations, this role requires Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) checks, and successful candidates must be eligible to obtain UK Security Clearance (SC).
For Canada Roles: Successful candidates must obtain and hold a security clearance at the reliability status level, and pass security assessment for the Canadian Controlled Goods Program (CGP) and ITAR.
We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.
With Pulsar - the world's most advanced PNT satellite infrastructure in Low Earth Orbit - Xona will offer a future-proof, backwards-compatible global positioning system optimized for absolute precision, superior power, and robust protection.
As a DevOps Engineer, you'll build and operate the delivery infrastructure that turns embedded and flight-adjacent software into reliable, traceable, test-validated releases. You'll partner with engineering teams to standardize CI/CD, automate test execution (including hardware-in-the-loop where applicable), and ensure high confidence in every change that reaches integration and flight readiness milestones.
What You'll Do
- Design and maintain pipelines that build, test, package, and publish artifacts for C/C and embedded Linux targets.
- Implement gated workflows: unit tests, integration tests, static analysis, formatting/linting, and release promotion.
- Manage build and test infrastructure (runners/agents, caching, artifact repositories, secrets management) for reliability and scalability.
- Automate environment provisioning and configuration to eliminate "works on my machine" build variance.
- Integrate automated system tests into pipelines-where feasible, include HIL test triggers, log capture, and result triage workflows.
- Ensure telemetry/log artifacts are collected consistently for debugging and regression tracking.
- Improve iteration speed: faster builds, smarter caching, parallelization, and clear pipeline feedback.
- Establish best practices for versioning, release notes, traceability, and audit-friendly change control.
- Implement dependency scanning, SBOM generation workflows (where required), and secure credential handling.
- Support reproducible builds and provenance tracking for mission-critical releases.
- Create runbooks for on-call/build issues, pipeline operation, and release procedures.
- Coach teams on adopting CI standards and writing testable, automation-friendly code.
Required Qualifications
- Experience: 5 years building CI/CD and automation for software teams; demonstrated ownership of production-grade pipelines.
- Tooling: Strong proficiency with common CI systems, build orchestration, artifact management, and infrastructure automation.
- Build Systems: Hands-on experience supporting C/C builds and cross-compilation toolchains.
- Operational Excellence: Strong debugging skills for flaky pipelines, environmental issues, and test infrastructure instability.
- Communication: Excellent written documentation and cross-team alignment skills.
- Experience supporting embedded or safety-critical software delivery environments.
- Familiarity with artifact signing, provenance, or audit-ready release workflows.
- Exposure to HIL/SIL integration as part of CI.
- Enjoy operational rigor: repeatability, traceability, and "no surprises" releases.
- Know how to balance developer velocity with safety-critical quality expectations.
- Can translate engineering needs into pragmatic automation and stable tooling.
- Experience supporting embedded or safety-critical software delivery environments.
- Familiarity with artifact signing, provenance, or audit-ready release workflows.
- Exposure to HIL/SIL integration as part of CI.
- Enjoy operational rigor: repeatability, traceability, and "no surprises" releases.
- Know how to balance developer velocity with safety-critical quality expectations.
- Can translate engineering needs into pragmatic automation and stable tooling.
For U.K. Roles: To comply with U.K. regulations, this role requires Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) checks, and successful candidates must be eligible to obtain UK Security Clearance (SC).
For Canada Roles: Successful candidates must obtain and hold a security clearance at the reliability status level, and pass security assessment for the Canadian Controlled Goods Program (CGP) and ITAR.
We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.
Salary : $140,000 - $200,000