Senior Software Engineer, Build & Release

Flock Safety is an all-in-one technology solution to eliminate crime and keep communities safe. Our intelligent platform combines the power of communities at scale - including cities, businesses, schools, and law enforcement agencies - to shape a safer future together. Our full-service, maintenance-free technology solution is trusted by communities across the country to help solve and deter crime in the pursuit of safer communities for everyone.

Our holistic public safety platform is comprehensive and intelligent, providing the actionable evidence needed to solve, deter and reduce crime across neighborhoods, schools, businesses and entire cities. Without compromising transparency or privacy, we are turning unbiased data into objective answers.

Flock strives to offer a career-defining experience where you can also make an impact on your community. While safety is a serious business, we are a supportive team that is optimizing the remote experience to create strong and fulfilling relationships even when we are physically apart. Our group of hard-working employees thrive in a positive and inclusive environment, where a bias towards action is rewarded. 

We have raised over $500M in venture capital from investors including Tiger Global, Andreessen Horowitz, Matrix Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, and Initialized Capital. Now surpassing a $5.5B valuation, Flock is scaling intentionally and seeking the best and brightest to help us meet our goal of reducing crime in the United States by 25% in the next three years.

The Device SRE team is responsible for the automation of software build, release, deployment, and monitoring for the Devices team. We are expanding our capacity to automate software builds and releases to accommodate demand from our quickly growing portfolio of IoT devices, as well as migrating most of our existing Jenkins workflows to GitHub Actions. If you have a systems-oriented mindset, a passion for build automation, and an appreciation for the unique challenges of IoT software build toolchains, we’d love to hear from you!

The Skillset

• Embedded Software & Systems Engineering: Experience with real-time operating systems (RTOS), firmware development, embedded Linux, or Android Open Source Project (AOSP).

• Programming Proficiency: Strong coding skills in Python, C, C++, or other scripting and low-level languages; understanding of common data structures and algorithms.

• Software Development Workflows: Expertise in build automation, continuous integration (CI), test automation, and tools like Git, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Gradle, Bazel, Make, Ninja.

• Device Telemetry & Monitoring: Experience with logging, metrics collection, and fault diagnosis on embedded or distributed systems.

• Databases & Logging: Familiarity with SQL (PostgreSQL), NoSQL, or time-series databases (Prometheus, DataDog) for telemetry and analytics.

• Data Processing & Visualization: Experience with data ingestion pipelines, modeling, and storage, along with tools like Grafana for dashboarding.

• Cloud & Edge Computing: Experience with AWS or other cloud platforms, as well as edge computing and its role in IoT.

• IoT Device Management: Experience managing a fleet of connected devices, including firmware updates, remote diagnostics, and over-the-air (OTA) updates.

• Site Reliability Engineering (SRE): Understanding of on-call rotations, alerting, and production monitoring best practices for embedded systems.

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Familiarity with Terraform or similar tools for provisioning and managing infrastructure.

Feeling uneasy that you haven’t ticked every box? That’s okay; we’ve felt that way too. Studies have shown women and minorities are less likely to apply unless they meet all qualifications. We encourage you to break the status quo and apply to roles that would make you excited to come to work every day.

We are a results-oriented culture and believe job descriptions are a thing of the past. We prescribe 90 day plans and believe that good days lead to good weeks, which lead to good months. This serves as a preview of the 90 day plan you will receive if you were to be hired as a Senior Software Engineer, Build & Release at Flock Safety.

The First 30 Days

• Learn your role, our team, our stakeholders, and the company as a whole.

• Build relationships with key members of the Devices team (developers, testers, SRE’s) via 1:1’s.

• Understand the two primary developer workflow stacks (GitHub & Gerrit+Jenkins).

• Understand how software is qualified by QA.

• Understand how software is deployed to devices in the fleet.

• Understand how device fleet health is monitored via Grafana, DataDog, and other tools.

• Work closely with your manager to understand the process of getting work done (communications tools, meetings, issue tracking, etc).

• Join twice-weekly Office Hours meetings to get to know stakeholders and their needs.

• Join twice-monthly Fleet Management meetings to understand how we interact.

• Learn Flock solution architecture: Deep dive to understand how each component is interconnected. 

The First 60 Days 

• Improve (bug / feature) a software-release-related dashboard in Grafana.

• Improve (bug / feature) the automated software release notes.

• Improve (bug / feature) the GitHub Actions or Jenkins Pipelines for software build and release.

• Review the code of other engineers in GitHub and Gerrit.

• Onboard a new Devices Engineer into required systems.

• Modify infrastructure in Terraform.

• Take a crash course in the incident response protocols for Flock Safety.

• Participate in on-call rotations (initially paired with a more experienced team member).

• Discuss high level career goals and expectations with your manager. 

90 Days & Beyond 

• Help with any cross-team needs/dependencies.

• Contribute ideas for how we build better software, increase productivity, and deliver more value to customers.

• Implement actions that increase customer satisfaction and developer satisfaction.

• Participate in at least 3 customer calls within your first 90 days.

• Work with a field tech to do a Field Ops Ride-Along.

• Evaluate the first 90 days with your manager to highlight successes and learning opportunities.

We want our interview process to be a true reflection of our culture: transparent and collaborative. Throughout the interview process, your recruiter will guide you through the next steps and ensure you feel prepared every step of the way. 

1. Our First Chat: During this first conversation, you’ll meet with a recruiter to chat through your background, what you could bring to Flock, what you are looking for in your next role, and who we are.

2. The Hiring Manager Interview: You will meet with your potential future boss to really dive into the role, the team, expectations, and what success means at Flock. This is your chance to really nerd out with someone in your field.

3. The Technical Assessment: Our technical assessments seek to test the hard skills required to do the job. Engineers may find themselves in coding interviews or architecture discussions, sales roles may present mock discovery calls, and leadership roles may craft 90 day plans. Your recruiter will inform you of which assessment you will be assigned and ensure you are fully prepared for your big day.

4. The Panel: Learn more about the team, responsibilities, and workflows. You should be prepared to speak about past projects, how you collaborate and communicate with others, and how you live our values. Depending on the team and role you are interviewing for, you may meet with several teammates as well as cross-functional partners.

5. The Executive Review: A chance to meet an executive and view Flock from a different lens. Be prepared to ask well-thought-out questions about the company, culture, and more.

Salary & Equity

In this role, you’ll receive a starting salary of $150,000-$200,000 as well as stock options. Base salary is determined by job-related experience, education/training, as well as market indicators. Your recruiter will discuss this in-depth with you during our first chat.

🌴Flexible PTO: We seriously mean it, plus 11 company holidays.

⚕️Fully-paid health benefits plan for employees: including Medical, Dental, and Vision and an HSA match. 

👪Family Leave: All employees receive 12 weeks of 100% paid parental leave. Birthing parents are eligible for an additional 6-8 weeks of physical recovery time.

🍼Fertility & Family Benefits: We have partnered with Maven, a complete digital health benefit for starting and raising a family. Flock will provide a $50,000-lifetime maximum benefit related to eligible adoption, surrogacy, or fertility expenses.

🧠Spring Health: Spring Health offers a variety of mental health benefits, including therapy, coaching, medication management, and digital tools, all tailored to each individual's needs.

💖Caregiver Support: We have partnered with Cariloop to provide our employees with caregiver support 

💸Carta Tax Advisor: Employees receive 1:1 sessions with Equity Tax Advisors who can address individual grants, model tax scenarios, and answer general questions. 

💚ERGs: We want all employees to thrive and feel like they belong at Flock. We offer three ERGs today - Women of Flock, Flock Proud, and Melanin Motion. If you are interested in talking to a representative from one of these, please let your recruiter know.

💻WFH Stipend: $150 per month to cover the costs of working from home.

📚Productivity Stipend: $250 per year to use on Audible, Calm, Masterclass, Duolingo, Grammarly and so much more.

🏠Home Office Stipend: A one-time $750 to help you create your dream office.

🐾Pet Insurance: We’ve partnered with Pumpkin to provide insurance for our employee’s fur babies. 

Flock is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diverse backgrounds and thoughts and welcome everyone to apply for employment with us. We are committed to fostering an environment that is inclusive, transparent, and collaborative. Mutual respect is central to how Flock operates, and we believe the best solutions come from diverse perspectives, experiences, and skills. We embrace our differences and know that we are stronger working together.

If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please email us at careers@flocksafety.com. This information will be treated as confidential and used only to determine an appropriate accommodation for the interview process.

At Flock Safety, we compensate our employees fairly for their work. Base salary is determined by job-related experience, education/training, as well as market indicators. The range above is representative of base salary only and does not include equity, sales bonus plans (when applicable) and benefits. This range may be modified in the future. This job posting may span more than one career level.