Open Source Lead Engineer (Bazel)

Open Source Lead Engineer (Bazel)

This role is responsible for the day-to-day health and evolution of Aspect Build’s open-source projects.

Reporting to the Chief Evangelist and Co-founder, you will own triage, maintenance, and ongoing improvements across Aspect’s OSS ecosystem. You’ll be a key point of contact for contributors, customers, and internal teams—making sure issues and pull requests move forward, designs converge, and fixes land in a way that works in real customer environments.

You will be customer-facing, hands-on, and organized. Your work directly supports Aspect Build’s reputation for quality, responsiveness, and reliability in open source.

You will also own and help evolve Aspect’s Triage App, using it daily to prioritize work and improve how we scale OSS maintenance.

Location: San Francisco Bay Area preferred; remote considered.

What You’ll Do

OSS Triage & Ownership

• Triage and manage issues and pull requests across Aspect Build’s open-source repositories.
• Keep a clear, prioritized view of work across many projects.
• Participate in design and implementation discussions with contributors to help guide work toward mergeable solutions.
• Provide timely feedback, follow-ups, and status updates to keep work moving.

Customer-Facing Problem Solving

• Work directly with customers and prospects on OSS-related issues surfaced through GitHub and the Triage App.
• Validate fixes and improvements in real customer environments.
• Occasionally support billable consulting work when it directly relates to the OSS you maintain.

Maintenance & Evolution

• Maintain existing OSS projects through bug fixes, refactors, and incremental improvements.
• Update OSS as Bazel releases new capabilities and tooling.
• Remove or simplify workarounds as upstream bugs are fixed or platform features mature.
• Build small tools or automation to make triage and maintenance more scalable.
• Occasionally contribute new features or small Bazel rulesets when needed.

Coordination & Feedback

• Coordinate priorities with the Chief Evangelist, product, engineering, support, and the BUILD Foundation.
• Share recurring issues and ecosystem feedback to help guide product and OSS investment.
• Track work and outcomes using internal tools and systems (e.g. triage dashboards, HubSpot).

What Success Looks Like

• Issues and pull requests are responded to quickly and move steadily toward resolution.
• Contributors receive clear guidance and produce higher-quality, mergeable changes.
• Customers see OSS fixes land and work in their environments.
• Aspect’s OSS projects stay reliable, current, and aligned with Bazel’s evolution.
• The triage process becomes easier to operate as usage grows.

What We’re Looking For

~2–3 years of professional software engineering experience.

• Hands-on experience with Bazel or strong interest in build systems and developer tooling.
• Comfort working across multiple codebases and repositories.
• Ability to debug issues and reason about build, CI, or tooling problems.
• Clear written communication in issues, pull requests, and technical discussions.
• Organized, proactive, and comfortable owning a queue of ongoing work.
• Willingness to work directly with customers and open-source contributors.
• Comfortable working in a remote-first, fast-moving startup environment.

• Real ownership of widely used open-source software early in your career.
• Direct exposure to customers and real production problems.
• Learn Bazel, OSS maintenance, and developer tooling from experts.
• Strong open-source culture with mentorship and growth opportunities.
• Competitive compensation, equity, and benefits.
• SF Bay Area collaboration with remote flexibility.