Escalations Engineer - Pipelines
buildkite • ANZ Region
Posted: May 31, 2026
Job Description
About Buildkite
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.
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.
Job Overview
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.
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.
🚀 What You'll Do
- Own L3 escalations end-to-end — from symptom through diagnosis to a shipped fix
- Work in our Ruby on Rails monolith and PostgreSQL databases to resolve issues at the source
- 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
- Partner with Support, TAMs, and Solutions Architects on technical diagnostics for high-impact customers
- Lead the engineering side of incident response when production issues require deeper investigation
- Help improve the onboarding and migration experience for customers moving onto Buildkite from other CI/CD platforms
- Take customer wins from intake to delivery — own them, follow through, don't drop the ball
- Contribute to architectural discussions on platform reliability and customer experience
- Provide or respond to feedback on GitHub pull requests
🎨 What You Bring
- 5+ years of experience in engineering
- Comfortable working in a Ruby on Rails monolith — able to read, debug, and modify production code confidently
- A track record of taking problems from symptom to root cause without losing focus or scope
- Pattern recognition — you see recurring issues and propose systemic fixes rather than one-off patches
- 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
- Comfortable with performance at scale — N+1 queries, indexing strategies, diagnosing slow paths
- Experience using observability tools like Datadog, Honeycomb, etc.
- Care about code quality and know how to balance perfect with practical
- Calm and consistent under high volume — finish what you start
- Understand good development practices: clear commits, thoughtful pull requests, and reliable tests with tools like RSpec
Key Technical Stacks & Components:
- Ruby on Rails
- PostgreSQL
- GraphQL
- React
- Datadog
- Amazon ECS
- RDS Performance Insights
- Terraform
- Redis
- Kafka
✨ Why Join Buildkite
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.
- Competitive compensation and benefits package
- Flexible, remote-first culture
- Opportunities for professional growth, leadership, and technical ownership
- Work alongside talented, passionate engineers building world-class developer tools
- A collaborative, inclusive, and innovative culture where your ideas make a real impact
Additional Content
About Buildkite
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.
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.
Job Overview
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.
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.
🚀 What You'll Do
- Own L3 escalations end-to-end — from symptom through diagnosis to a shipped fix
- Work in our Ruby on Rails monolith and PostgreSQL databases to resolve issues at the source
- 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
- Partner with Support, TAMs, and Solutions Architects on technical diagnostics for high-impact customers
- Lead the engineering side of incident response when production issues require deeper investigation
- Help improve the onboarding and migration experience for customers moving onto Buildkite from other CI/CD platforms
- Take customer wins from intake to delivery — own them, follow through, don't drop the ball
- Contribute to architectural discussions on platform reliability and customer experience
- Provide or respond to feedback on GitHub pull requests
🎨 What You Bring
- 5+ years of experience in engineering
- Comfortable working in a Ruby on Rails monolith — able to read, debug, and modify production code confidently
- A track record of taking problems from symptom to root cause without losing focus or scope
- Pattern recognition — you see recurring issues and propose systemic fixes rather than one-off patches
- 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
- Comfortable with performance at scale — N+1 queries, indexing strategies, diagnosing slow paths
- Experience using observability tools like Datadog, Honeycomb, etc.
- Care about code quality and know how to balance perfect with practical
- Calm and consistent under high volume — finish what you start
- Understand good development practices: clear commits, thoughtful pull requests, and reliable tests with tools like RSpec
Key Technical Stacks & Components:
- Ruby on Rails
- PostgreSQL
- GraphQL
- React
- Datadog
- Amazon ECS
- RDS Performance Insights
- Terraform
- Redis
- Kafka
✨ Why Join Buildkite
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.
- Competitive compensation and benefits package
- Flexible, remote-first culture
- Opportunities for professional growth, leadership, and technical ownership
- Work alongside talented, passionate engineers building world-class developer tools
- A collaborative, inclusive, and innovative culture where your ideas make a real impact