Quality & Release Engineering Leader

About Bricklayer AI Bricklayer AI is the first AI cybersecurity platform that enables autonomous AI agents to work alongside human experts to operate smarter, faster, and more effective security operations teams. Our platform combines specialized AI agents, human oversight, enterprise governance, and deep integrations with security technologies to automate complex cybersecurity procedures while maintaining transparency, accountability, and trust.

Bricklayer empowers organizations to scale security operations without scaling headcount. The Position Bricklayer AI is seeking a Quality & Release Engineering Leader to establish and scale the systems, processes, and engineering practices that ensure every release of the Bricklayer platform meets the highest standards of quality, reliability, security, and customer readiness.

This is a hands-on leadership role responsible for quality engineering, test automation, release management, validation frameworks, performance testing, and AI workflow testing. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable designing automation frameworks, building quality processes, analyzing production defects, improving release velocity, and mentoring engineers.

This role will begin as approximately 70% hands-on contribution and 30% leadership, with responsibility for building the Quality & Release Engineering function as the company grows. You will work closely with Application Engineering, AI Engineering, Platform Engineering, Product Management, Customer Experience, and Security teams to ensure quality is embedded throughout the software development lifecycle.

Responsibilities

Quality Engineering Strategy Define and execute Bricklayer’s quality engineering strategy, standards, and roadmap Establish quality objectives, release criteria, and engineering best practices Create a culture where quality is owned throughout the software development lifecycle Develop and track quality metrics that drive continuous improvement Test Automation & Validation Design and implement automated testing frameworks across application, API, integration, infrastructure, and agent workflow layers Establish automated regression testing and continuous validation processes Build test coverage strategies that balance speed, confidence, and engineering efficiency Drive automation-first quality practices across engineering teams Continuously improve test coverage and reduce manual testing requirements Release Engineering Own release readiness processes and production deployment validation Establish release quality gates within CI/CD pipelines Develop release management procedures that improve deployment confidence and reliability Coordinate release planning and cross-functional validation activities Ensure production releases meet established quality and stability requirements AI & Agent Validation Develop testing methodologies for autonomous AI agents, multi-agent workflows, and AI-assisted decision-making Create frameworks to evaluate accuracy, consistency, repeatability, and reliability of agent outputs Validate model upgrades, prompt changes, workflow modifications, and orchestration logic Partner with AI Engineering to ensure AI-powered capabilities remain predictable, explainable, and trustworthy Performance & Reliability Testing Develop performance, scalability, resiliency, and load-testing programs Validate platform behavior under production-scale workloads Partner with Platform Engineering to identify reliability risks before deployment Establish testing procedures for high-availability and fault-tolerant systems Quality Metrics & Continuous Improvement Define and monitor quality KPIs including: Defect escape rate Automated test coverage Release stability Mean time to detect issues Mean time to resolution Customer-impacting incidents Lead root cause analysis and quality reviews following significant production issues Drive continuous improvement initiatives across engineering teams Security & Compliance Validation Partner with Security and Platform Engineering teams to validate security controls Support SOC 2 Type II and future compliance initiatives Ensure testing and validation processes support enterprise customer expectations Participate in customer security reviews and quality-related discussions when appropriate Leadership & Team Development Build and scale the Quality & Release Engineering organization Mentor engineers and establish quality engineering best practices Recruit and develop high-performing quality engineers Foster collaboration across Application Engineering, AI Engineering, Platform Engineering, Product Management, and Customer Experience teams Qualifications Required 8+ years of software quality engineering, release engineering, test automation, or related experience 3+ years of technical leadership experience Strong hands-on experience designing and implementing automated testing frameworks Experience building quality engineering processes in SaaS environments Strong understanding of modern software development lifecycles, Agile methodologies, and DevOps practices Experience integrating quality controls and automated testing into CI/CD pipelines Strong API testing, integration testing, and distributed systems testing experience Experience with performance, load, scalability, and reliability testing Strong understanding of release management and deployment validation processes Experience working closely with software engineering teams in fast-paced startup environments Excellent communication and leadership skills Preferred Experience testing AI, machine learning, LLM, or agent-based platforms Experience validating autonomous workflows and AI-driven decision systems Experience with Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Postman, k6, JMeter, Locust, or similar testing platforms Experience with AWS and cloud-native SaaS architectures Experience in cybersecurity products or security operations platforms Familiarity with SOC 2 and enterprise compliance requirements Experience building quality engineering organizations from the ground up Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field Why Join Bricklayer Quality and trust are foundational to autonomous cybersecurity operations.

As Quality & Release Engineering Leader, you will help define how Bricklayer validates AI agents, secures releases, ensures platform reliability, and delivers enterprise-grade software at scale. This is an opportunity to build a critical engineering function from the ground up and play a foundational role in shaping the future of AI-powered security operations.

Salary $170,000 - $200,000 per year