Ecosystem Engineering and Operations Lead- Remote Contractor

Company Description

The Yocto Project is an open source collaboration project that provides templates, tools and methods to help you create custom Linux-based systems for embedded system deployments in connected edge devices, servers, or virtual environments, regardless of the hardware architecture.

Job Description

About the Role

We are seeking a highly motivated and autonomous Ecosystem Engineering and Operations Lead to support the ongoing operations of a high-impact open source project. This is a full-time role focused on maintaining and evolving the release processes, technical infrastructure, and interaction with members and community across a complex and widely adopted open source ecosystem.

The role will work across multiple domains—including release engineering, automation systems (e.g., autobuilders), CVE and security management, documentation, and community/member support—to ensure timely execution, quality, and alignment with Technical Steering Committee (TSC) direction and Yocto Project governance board (GB) goals.

Key Responsibilities

TSC Operations

• Drive TSC priorities and action items to completion

• Drive technical resource prioritization to meet roadmap goals.

• Own proposal lifecycle execution.

• Direct stakeholder communications to achieve alignment and coordinated delivery of roadmap goals.
   

Release Process Management

• Define and execute bi-annual releases per Yocto Project's release lifecycle and guided by the planning roadmap

• Manage and communicate build milestones, feature progress, and dependencies to ensure transparency and on-time delivery.

• Monitor codebase, bug status, nightly builds, and feature readiness, coordinating with QA and build systems to trigger releases and ensure their quality and stability.

• Drive release notes and migration guides review for accuracy, clarity, and usability for appropriate audiences.

• Communicate project status consistently to keep the community engaged and stakeholders aligned.

Build & Integration Oversight (Autobuilder/CI)

• Facilitate patch review calls

• Drive resolution of high-impact and intermittent build issues with build and integration engineering, maintainers, and the community. 

• Ensure regular performance, patch, and CVE metrics reporting with visualization

• Contribute to autobuilder tooling improvements 

Member Services & Benefits

• Onboard members to CI infrastructure and manage layer testing enablement

• Manage and fulfill hosting, mirror, and mailing list requests from member organizations

• Ensure timely communication and approvals for member-specific testing and services

Documentation & Communication

• Help draft and coordinate project communications 

• Ensure documentation is up to date, covering key features and new development

Security & CVE Coordination

• Monitor and maintain CVE tracking and reporting tools

• Coordinate with maintainers and the Security Incident Response Team (SIRT) on high-priority issues to ensure issues are resolved

• Ensure discussion and planning to align tooling with evolving industry standards and upstream changes

Cross-Functional Technical Support

• Coordinate and facilitate communication, planning and goals with various maintainer roles (kernel, pseudo, LTS, security, QA, etc.)

• Assist with technical proposal implementation as delegated by the TSC

• Track issues through to resolution using issue trackers, mailing lists, and internal tooling
   

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of technical program management or engineering project coordination in software development environments

• Proven experience in open source communities, ideally in infrastructure, CI/CD, or embedded systems projects

• Demonstrated bias for action, autonomy, and ability to drive complex technical programs independently

• Strong communication skills, both written and verbal, especially in remote and async environments

• Familiarity with release cycles, CI/CD infrastructure, and issue tracking systems (e.g., Bugzilla)

• Comfortable working across multiple time zones and cultures

• Comfortable with email/patch based workflows and IRC

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience managing or contributing to open source release engineering, build infrastructur