Escalations Engineer - Pipelines

<h2><strong>About Buildkite</strong></h2> <p>At Buildkite, our mission is to unblock every developer on the planet. We've rethought how software delivery should work and have built a platform that is fast, reliable, secure, and able to scale to the needs of the most demanding high-growth tech companies globally including Uber, Airbnb, Shopify, Canva, PagerDuty, Lyft, and Pinterest.</p> <p><strong><em>Our engineering teams work across AU/NZ and US Pacific time zones — a deliberate choice that lets us move fast with real-time collaboration. At the moment, we are prioritising engineers who are based in the AU/NZ region.</em></strong></p> <h2><strong>Job Overview</strong></h2> <p>In this role, you'll own the engineering response to the hardest problems our customers run into. You'll work inside the Pipelines team — partnering closely with Support, TAMs, and Solutions Architects — to take escalations from symptom to root cause, ship fixes back into the product, and remove the underlying causes of recurring tickets.</p> <p>This is a deliberately different role from the traditional support engineering hamster wheel. We're not looking for someone to just clear tickets faster. We're looking for someone to own the space — to spot patterns, drive systemic fixes, and make Buildkite stickier and more reliable for the customers who depend on it most.</p> <h2><strong>🚀 What You'll Do</strong></h2> <ul> <li>Own L3 escalations end-to-end — from symptom through diagnosis to a shipped fix</li> <li>Work in our Ruby on Rails monolith and PostgreSQL databases to resolve issues at the source</li> <li>Spot recurring patterns in support load and ship product changes that eliminate the underlying cause — the best support ticket is the one that never gets opened</li> <li>Partner with Support, TAMs, and Solutions Architects on technical diagnostics for high-impact customers</li> <li>Lead the engineering side of incident response when production issues require deeper investigation</li> <li>Help improve the onboarding and migration experience for customers moving onto Buildkite from other CI/CD platforms</li> <li>Take customer wins from intake to delivery — own them, follow through, don't drop the ball</li> <li>Contribute to architectural discussions on platform reliability and customer experience</li> <li>Provide or respond to feedback on GitHub pull requests</li> </ul> <h2><strong>🎨 What You Bring</strong></h2> <ul> <li>5+ years of experience in engineering</li> <li>Comfortable working in a Ruby on Rails monolith — able to read, debug, and modify production code confidently</li> <li>A track record of taking problems from symptom to root cause without losing focus or scope</li> <li>Pattern recognition — you see recurring issues and propose systemic fixes rather than one-off patches</li> <li>Comfortable in customer-facing conversations when escalations require it — can triage in real time, communicate clearly, and give customers confidence they're in the right hands</li> <li>Comfortable with performance at scale — N+1 queries, indexing strategies, diagnosing slow paths</li> <li>Experience using observability tools like Datadog, Honeycomb, etc.</li> <li>Care about code quality and know how to balance perfect with practical</li> <li>Calm and consistent under high volume — finish what you start</li> <li>Understand good development practices: clear commits, thoughtful pull requests, and reliable tests with tools like RSpec</li> </ul> <h2><strong>Key Technical Stacks &amp; Components:</strong></h2> <ul> <li>Ruby on Rails</li> <li>PostgreSQL</li> <li>GraphQL</li> <li>React</li> <li>Datadog</li> <li>Amazon ECS</li> <li>RDS Performance Insights</li> <li>Terraform</li> <li>Redis</li> <li>Kafka</li> </ul> <h2><strong>✨ Why Join Buildkite</strong></h2> <p>At Buildkite, we value kindness, autonomy, and collaboration. You'll be part of a remote-first company where your work can make a meaningful impact – empowering engineers worldwide to build and deliver better software faster.</p> <ul> <li>Competitive compensation and benefits package</li> <li>Flexible, remote-first culture</li> <li>Opportunities for professional growth, leadership, and technical ownership</li> <li>Work alongside talented, passionate engineers building world-class developer tools</li> <li>A collaborative, inclusive, and innovative culture where your ideas make a real impact</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p><div class="content-conclusion"><h3><strong>🌈 Equal Opportunity Employer</strong></h3> <p>At Buildkite, we value diversity and celebrate all types of skills, backgrounds, and experiences. We’re dedicated to fostering an inclusive environment and providing reasonable accommodations throughout our recruitment process.</p> <p>If you need any accommodations or support during the application or interview process, please reach out to us at accommodations@buildkite.com.</p></div>