build reliability engineer

Build Reliability Engineer (BRE)

Focus: Operational / Build Support

Role Overview

The Build Reliability Engineer (BRE) is a hands-on, operational role responsible for the day-to-day health and stability of the build farm. Acting as the first point of contact for build failures, the BRE focuses on monitoring, triage, investigation, and clear communication-ensuring issues are understood, routed correctly, and resolved efficiently.

This position is support- and operations-focused, embedded in the build farm environment, and works closely with development, QA, and infrastructure teams. It is not responsible for designing, rebuilding, or owning CI/CD pipelines.

What This Role Is

• Operational and support-oriented
• Focused on monitoring, triage, investigation, and reporting
• Embedded in the build farm day-to-day
• Front-line support for developers across multiple disciplines
• Hands-on with build outputs, logs, and failure analysis

What This Role Is Not

• A CI/CD engineering or pipeline design role
• Responsible for redesigning or rebuilding build systems
• Driving large-scale CI/CD transformation initiatives
• A senior, architectural, or strategy-focused position

Typical Day-to-Day Activities

• Monitor build pipelines and build farm output throughout the day
• Act as first-line support when builds fail or behave unexpectedly
• Investigate failures by reviewing logs, diagnostics, and build behaviour
• Identify recurring issues, instability patterns, and systemic problems
• Triage failures and determine likely root causes (code, configuration, environment, tooling)
• Collate findings and provide clear, actionable feedback to relevant teams
• Work closely with developers, QA, and infrastructure teams to support resolution
• Provide regular updates on build health and escalate critical issues where required
• Maintain lightweight documentation covering common issues and troubleshooting steps

Key Responsibilities

Build Monitoring & Support

• Continuously monitor build outputs and overall build health across the studio

Front-Line Triage & Investigation

• Serve as the first responder for build failures
• Analyse logs, build results, and system outputs to identify likely causes

Operational Diagnostics

• Identify patterns and trends in build failures, instability, or performance issues

Collaboration & Facilitation

• Partner with development, QA, and infrastructure teams to support issue resolution
• Ensure problems are clearly understood and actionable

Communication & Reporting

• Clearly communicate build status, incident details, and investigation findings to stakeholders

Documentation

• Maintain simple operational documentation, troubleshooting guides, and known-issue references

Tools & Technologies

Experience with any two of the following is sufficient:

• CI / Build Systems: TeamCity (monitoring and operational usage; no pipeline ownership required)
• Source Control: Perforce
• Game Engines: Unreal Engine 4 or 5

Deep CI/CD configuration, pipeline design, or platform engineering experience is not required.

Skills & Experience Required

• Typically 3-5 years experience in a build support, build engineering, or operational reliability role
• Strong understanding of how build farms and build pipelines operate
• Proven experience monitoring and triaging build failures
• Comfortable analysing logs, diagnostics, and build outputs
• Familiarity with automated build processes and basic testing concepts
• Some exposure to debugging and coding (C# and/or C++) to understand failure causes
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Clear communicator with both technical and non-technical audiences
• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, support-driven environment

Ideal Background Profiles

• Build Engineer (support-focused)
• Build Support Engineer
• CI / Build Operations Engineer
• Technical Support Engineer with strong build farm exposure