Full-Time
Developer Events Lead
Buildkite
51-200 employees
Self-hosted CI pipelines for software
Compensation Overview
$170k - $190k/yr
San Francisco, CA, USA
Remote
Remote role with a Bay Area starting focus; the posting allows working from anywhere in the world for up to six weeks per year.
 Business & Strategy (2) |
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- You have developed and led an events, community, or field marketing strategy.
- You can build scalable programs and repeatable systems rather than only delivering individual events.
- You can work autonomously, make decisions, and bring clarity to ambiguity.
- You can translate business goals into a practical execution plan and bring others along with you.
- You can measure event success beyond attendance by connecting it to business and community outcomes.
- You build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders, technical audiences, and community partners.
- You are interested in developer communities and understand what creates authentic engagement.
- You have created memorable experiences, such as a flagship event, conference activation, or community program.
- Define where Buildkite shows up in field marketing, why it appears there, and how success is measured, including return on investment.
- Build a framework for measuring event impact and connect events to pipeline, brand, and community outcomes.
- Partner with Marketing, Sales, and go-to-market teams to prioritize opportunities, balance trade-offs, and maximize impact.
- Experiment with new event formats, partnerships, and community programs to improve developer engagement.
- Create budgets, vendor relationships, and operational playbooks for a high-quality, repeatable events program.
- Document processes and establish systems that allow the program to grow without increasing complexity.
- Improve how events are planned, executed, and evaluated.
- Own flagship events end-to-end, from strategy and planning through execution and post-event analysis.
- Represent Buildkite to customers, community leaders, partners, sponsors, and industry stakeholders.
- Ensure every event reflects the Buildkite brand and creates meaningful value for attendees.
- Share insights and learnings using data to refine strategy and improve future programs.
- Partner across teams and support contractors or external partners to deliver outcomes.
- You have built events or community programs from the ground up.
- You have relationships within Bay Area or other developer communities and technology event networks.
- You have worked in or alongside Developer Relations.
- You have used account-based marketing, intent data, or attribution frameworks to connect events with pipeline and revenue outcomes.
Buildkite provides a continuous integration platform that lets software teams run CI pipelines on their own infrastructure. It helps teams build, test, and deploy code quickly by orchestrating jobs across multiple agents, with workflows defined in code and executed securely on customer-hosted systems. Builds can be parallelized and scaled across the user’s own hardware or cloud, giving users control over security, compliance, and performance while staying production-ready. Buildkite differentiates itself by offering on-premises or self-managed CI runners instead of relying solely on public cloud runners, along with a subscription-based model that includes enterprise-level support and plugins. The company aims to help development teams deliver high-quality software faster by providing reliable, scalable CI that respects an organization’s infrastructure and security requirements.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Series B
Total Funding
$39.3M
Headquarters
Melbourne, Australia
Founded
2014
Get referred to Buildkite
See people who can refer or advise you
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- August 17, 2026 public preview lowers switching friction for GitHub Actions customers.
- August 23, 2026 Origin launch partner status opens Cursor’s agentic developer market.
- September 1, 2026 agent v4 stability and OpenTelemetry logs improve reliability and observability.
What critics are saying
- GitHub Actions compatibility gaps can break Marketplace-heavy workflows during migration, delaying conversions for months.
- August 12 and August 17, 2026 outages showed hosted-agent and EKS rollback fragility.
- Keith Pitt exited in March 2025; leadership churn threatens execution through 2027.
What makes Buildkite unique
- Buildkite’s August 2026 GitHub Actions plugin runs workflows unchanged, cutting migration rewrites.
- Its pipeline converter turns GitHub Actions workflows into native Buildkite pipelines incrementally.
- Buildkite’s self-hosted and scale-out delivery model gives enterprises infrastructure control AWS can’t match.
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Benefits
Flexible Work Hours
Remote Work Options
Health Insurance
401(k) Retirement Plan
Company Equity
Paid Vacation
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↓ -2%1 year growth
↓ -4%2 year growth
↓ -4%Buildkite's GitHub Actions plugin: A practical answer to CI/CD lock-in. webhani · 2026-08-21 On August 17, 2026, Buildkite released its GitHub Actions OSS plugin into public preview. It lets you run your existing .github/workflows/*.yml files as-is on a Buildkite pipeline - no rewrite required. Run compatible workflows unchanged today, then migrate to a native Buildkite pipeline step by step when you're ready. Webhani helps clients evaluate and migrate CI/CD platforms on multiple engagements, so a bridge feature like this - one that specifically lowers migration cost - is directly relevant to its work. The biggest obstacle to switching CI/CD platforms is the cost of rewriting workflows that already work. A project running dozens or hundreds of GitHub Actions workflow files usually can't move to a different platform without dealing with more than syntax differences - anything relying on the Actions Marketplace needs an equivalent replacement, and the migration project alone can stretch from weeks into months. Buildkite's approach lets you defer that rewrite: You switch the underlying platform first while running your existing workflows unmodified, then rewrite specific pieces into native Buildkite steps as it makes sense - a genuinely staged migration path. When Webhani advises clients on this, webhani inc. don't just compare feature sets - webhani inc. estimate the actual cost of switching away later. * Portability of your workflow assets - the more a workflow leans on GitHub Actions-specific syntax or Marketplace actions, the higher the eventual switching cost * Room for staged migration - can you migrate repo by repo, or workflow by workflow, instead of all at once? * Cost of running both platforms in parallel - budget for the overlap period upfront if you'll run old and new side by side during migration Buildkite's GitHub Actions plugin speaks directly to the second and third points here. Inserting a compatibility layer separates the decision to migrate from the actual work of rewriting. * Map compatibility gaps early - not every GitHub Actions syntax feature or Marketplace action is guaranteed to work identically; validate against the workflows you actually use * Measure performance differences - even the same workflow can behave differently on a new platform, with cache behavior and job parallelism affecting total run time * Agree on the end state up front - decide early whether "stay on the compatibility layer indefinitely" or "fully migrate to native pipelines" is the actual goal for the project Around the same time, reports surfaced that GitHub Actions' standard Linux runner pricing now matches CircleCI at $0.006 per minute. As pricing across CI/CD vendors converges, the deciding factor in platform selection is shifting from raw price toward migration friction and ecosystem integration. A compatibility layer like Buildkite's plugin fits squarely into that shift. Buildkite's GitHub Actions OSS plugin breaks the false choice between "rewrite everything" and "stay stuck." A compatibility layer that lets you switch platforms quickly and then migrate pieces to native steps as needed is a useful pattern - one worth keeping in mind whenever Webhani helps a client evaluate CI/CD platforms. When comparing options, weigh migration friction alongside raw feature comparisons, not instead of them.
Cursor Origin: code hosting rollout for paid plans. 2h ago · 0:00 listen · Source: TestingCatalog AI News Summary. Cursor is rolling out Origin, a new code-hosting service built directly into Cursor. This early beta began on August 17, 2026, for users on all paid plans, excluding enterprise organizations that opt out. Origin offers repositories, pull requests, code browsing, and GitHub sync, allowing users to store code and review changes in one place. Users can also access Cursor agents within Origin. A new Codebase tab serves as the entry point for Origin repositories. Teams can connect and sync GitHub projects, keeping GitHub as the source of truth. Comments made in Cursor on synced projects will appear on GitHub. What's interesting is that agents sit alongside the code and pull requests, enabling users to ask questions or request changes. Cursor is also building an app ecosystem around Origin, with initial integrations like Vercel, Depot, and Buildkite. The bottom line is that this aims to provide a unified platform for code management and collaboration. This is an AI-generated audio summary. Always check the original source for complete reporting.
Blacksmith Series B raises $45 mn led by Peak XV at $550 mn valuation. By Tanu August 17, 2026 4 Mins Read Blacksmith Series B has raised $45 million in fresh funding led by Peak XV Partners, valuing the San Francisco-based AI developer infrastructure startup at around $550 million. Existing backers Google Ventures (GV) and Y Combinator also participated in the round. The financing was completed in March 2026 but has been disclosed only now. With the latest investment, Blacksmith's total funding has reached approximately $58.5 million. The company plans to use a substantial share of the new capital to expand its computing capacity as demand rises for infrastructure that can test, validate and ship software generated with the help of artificial intelligence. Blacksmith targets rising AI code testing demand. Blacksmith operates in the continuous integration (CI) segment, helping engineering teams automatically build and test software before it moves further through the development process. The company was founded in 2024 by Aditya Jayaprakash, Aditya Maru and Aayush Shah. Its business has increasingly shifted toward supporting development workflows in which AI systems themselves generate and modify code. As AI coding tools become more capable, developers can produce software changes at a much faster pace. That increases the amount of code that needs to be tested and reviewed before deployment, creating additional pressure on existing CI infrastructure. Blacksmith said the number of CI jobs processed through its platform has been increasing by roughly 5% to 10% week-on-week since the beginning of 2026. The startup now serves more than 6,000 companies, with customers including Supabase, Clerk, Ashby and Mercury. Fresh capital to expand computing infrastructure. A major priority for the Blacksmith Series B proceeds will be increasing the company's computing footprint. Blacksmith currently manages hundreds of thousands of CPU cores and intends to expand that capacity by roughly 10 times in the coming months. The investment comes as the company prepares for a much larger volume of software testing workloads generated by AI-assisted development. Blacksmith argues that conventional CI infrastructure could face capacity and performance constraints as AI coding agents generate more pull requests and software changes. The company is therefore building infrastructure specifically designed around the speed and scale required by modern software development teams. Startup expands beyond traditional CI workflows. Blacksmith has also broadened its product offering beyond automated testing. Its recently introduced Code Smith is a cloud-based coding agent designed to work on software development tasks, including building features, fixing bugs and investigating CI failures. The company is also developing CodeSmith Quality Assurance, which is intended to automatically test code changes before they are merged. The broader strategy is to make the development cycle more automated, allowing both human developers and AI agents to move from writing code to validation and deployment more quickly. Blacksmith has positioned its infrastructure against established developer platforms such as GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Buildkite, Depot and Namespace. The startup claims its purpose-built CI cloud can execute workloads up to twice as quickly and reduce costs by 50% to 75% compared with GitHub-hosted runners. Blacksmith's own engineering updates also highlight the growing pressure AI-generated code is placing on continuous integration systems. Blacksmith's engineering blog Peak XV deepens US AI investment push. The Blacksmith Series B investment also highlights Peak XV Partners' expanding focus on US-based technology startups. The venture capital firm has been building its presence in the US since becoming an independent firm following the 2023 separation from Sequoia Capital. Its US portfolio includes AI and developer-focused companies such as Vapi, Mem0, Hyperbound and PostHog. Peak XV's official portfolio also lists Blacksmith among its investments, reflecting the firm's broader interest in developer infrastructure and AI-focused businesses. In February 2026, Peak XV announced $1.3 billion in new capital commitments across its India Seed, India Venture and APAC funds, underlining its continued investment activity across technology markets. The Blacksmith investment comes as AI increasingly changes the economics and workflow of software development. For the startup, the next phase will centre on scaling its infrastructure while expanding tools that allow AI-generated code to be tested and merged with less manual intervention. For more business and startup funding updates, readers can also explore [Lenskart Q1 FY27 results](https://businessmatters.in/lenskart-q1-fy27-results/) and [IndiQube Q1 FY27 results](https://businessmatters.in/indiqube-q1-fy27-results/).
AutoGrab appoints Ken Thompson as Chief Product Officer. MEDIA RELEASE 25 June 2026 AutoGrab, the Melbourne-founded automotive data intelligence platform, has appointed Ken Thompson as Chief Product Officer. Thompson joins from software delivery company Buildkite, where as SVP, Head of Product he led the platform used by Uber, OpenAI and Slack. Ken was previously Chief Product Officer at Stax, part of the Versent Group acquired by Telstra for $267.5 million, and has held senior product roles at Microsoft. The appointment comes as AutoGrab scales from Australian market leader to global platform. In January the company completed an $80 million Series B raise, valuing it at $230 million, and is expanding across the UK and Europe. Ken will lead AutoGrab's global product strategy across dealers, insurers, lenders, marketplaces and enterprise partners. "Ken has spent fifteen years building SaaS products that scale internationally, most recently at Buildkite and Stax," said Daniel Werzberger, CEO of AutoGrab. "That is exactly the experience we need as we take our platform into new markets while continuing to invest heavily at home in Australia." "Dealers, insurers, lenders and fleets act on our data every day," he said. "Ken knows how to build products they trust, and how to put AI to work where it changes the result rather than the marketing." Ken Thompson said the depth of AutoGrab's platform set the opportunity apart. "AutoGrab answers the three questions behind every automotive transaction: what a vehicle is, what it is worth now, and where that value is heading," he said. "Few companies own data of that depth across this many markets." "I'm joining as the platform goes global," Ken added. "My job is to turn that rich automotive intelligence into products that don't just deliver insight but automate the decisions dealers, insurers and lenders make every day, so our customers, and AutoGrab, win together." About AutoGrab AutoGrab is the automotive data intelligence platform serving dealerships, insurers, financial institutions, fleet operators and marketplaces across Australia, the UK, New Zealand and Malaysia. Founded in Melbourne in 2020, the company provides vehicle identification, valuation and market intelligence through proprietary technology and exclusive data partnerships. More than 1,000 dealerships and over 90% of Australian motor insurers use AutoGrab data. The company is headquartered in Melbourne with offices in London. For further information please contact:
Buildkite has named James Wilson as Chief Technology Officer.