Staff Software Engineer, Docker AI Substrate (Seattle or Palo Alto)

About this role

ABOUT DOCKER Docker has been one of the most loved brands in developer tooling, trusted by more than 20 million monthly users and over 20 billion container image pulls. From solo founders to the world's largest companies, developers rely on Docker to build, share, and run their applications across our suite of products including Docker Desktop, Docker Hub, and Docker Scout. We are a globally distributed, remote-first team building the tools that define how software gets built and delivered.

As AI agents redefine software development, Docker is at the center of that shift, providing the sandboxed environments, verified images, and secure infrastructure that make autonomous workflows trustworthy by default. _______________________________________________________________________ As agents take on bigger jobs, the infrastructure around them matters more. Docker's answer is to give every agent a strong boundary, make its environment and authority reproducible, and let the work run where it makes sense, from a developer's laptop to the cloud.

The Docker AI Substrate team brings that foundation to the enterprise: the largest companies in the world, running agents at scale, with the security, reliability, and control they expect from any critical system. We are a small, senior team at the start of that work. As a Staff Software Engineer here, you will shape the architecture, build the core systems, and run what you build. Locations: Seattle, WA or Palo Alto, CA.

RESPONSIBILITIES - Design and build the systems that deploy, release, and operate Docker's agentic platform for enterprise customers, in Go and on Kubernetes. - Make the platform run consistently across cloud providers and environments, with the security, identity, and network boundaries enterprises require. - Own the release and supply chain path so every deployment is reproducible, verifiable, and trusted. - Run what you build: production ownership, on-call, SLOs, incident response, and the operational tooling that keeps it boring.

- Set technical direction with the team's architect and engineering leadership, and work with partner teams across runtime, developer experience, identity, and observability. - Raise the bar through design review, testing discipline, and mentorship as the team grows. QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED - You have built and operated a cloud control and management plane. Software that provisions, upgrades, and watches infrastructure for many tenants or environments, in production, with a pager.