What Is a Build Engineer and How to Become One

By ZipRecruiter Marketplace Research Team

A build engineer, sometimes called a build and release engineer or release engineer, is a computer software engineer who is focused mainly on developing a line from a program’s source code to a publically available product. In the development of modern computer applications, code is rarely written from scratch. Instead, build or DevOps engineers find open source code and facilitate the integration of different sources into a workable piece of software. They do this by using code to connect the various sources together.

The qualifications you need to work as a build engineer include extensive programming and coding experience and oftentimes a bachelor’s degree. You can substitute significant experience on development teams or work in the IT industry for a college degree. Skills you need to have include coding and scripting ability, familiarity with a wide assortment of open source technology and applications, and experience in deployment and testing of new programs. In addition to your technical skills, you should have good verbal and written communication, and you need to be comfortable working with a large team of developers and programmers.

The major responsibilities of a build or DevOps engineer revolve around the deployment and testing of applications. In the current climate of software development, it is easier to release applications incrementally and perform lots of testing on that software to ensure that it works on a wide variety of platforms. Because the software you are developing is meant for business purposes, you have a mix of programming and business analytics duties.