As someone who has recently developed a focused interest on build systems, I have noticed the large vacuum in the space for a content-based Make-like that has a similarly low of a barrier of entry. HN user bobsomers said it well the other day:
"There is a much tighter, cleaner, simpler build system within Bazel struggling to get out. A judicious second take at it with a minimal focus, while taking some of the best ideas, could be wildly successful I think."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32831890
I think 'redo' is probably the closest contender these days.
apenwarr's redo implementation is probably the most popular, the most mature, and has been built with a lot of smart design choices:
https://redo.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Pluggable caching, which AFAIK apenwarr/redo does not yet support, would be a great addition, to support remote, shared caching.