Should company have different build engineer and install engineer for Enterprise Software ?

Question

1. What is the difference between Build Engineer and Install Engineer ?
2. Should Companies have different Build Engineer and Install Engineer ?

Answer 1

There are other considerations than just the job roles. Think Sarbanes-Oxley and ITIL.

The answer comes from the structure of your organization and if it is a public company or not. It's an easy question to answer if you are a public company requiring Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. You must separate by policy release engineering from software development if you intend to keep your production environment passing audits.

If your organization production environment follows ITIL standards, your release engineering structure will prevent builds from being initiated from the production group.

A build engineer works in software development to create a layout, build scripts and configurations that can be installed into production. A release engineer performs the install and any manual configuration steps, as well as any real-time release debugging.

Ultimately, you want your build scripts and environments isolated from your production environments. This will ultimately complicate the job role of SCM, however, producing a standalone artifact that can be installed and tested without your assistance will fit any organization. IMHO.