Staff Software Engineer, Agentic Platform

Join Docker's Agentic Platform team to build the foundational infrastructure powering the next generation of AI-driven workflows. Intelligent agents are rapidly becoming the primary interface between developers and complex systems and we're building the platform that makes them reliable, scalable, and observable at production scale. You'll be working on the core agent execution runtime, orchestration primitives, and the cloud infrastructure that keeps the Agentic Platform running 24/7. This is a high-ownership role: you won't just build systems, you'll run them, respond when they fail, and drive continuous improvement across the stack. This is a greenfield opportunity to shape how agents are built and operated at scale. You'll work alongside seasoned engineers, collaborating with partner teams across AI infrastructure, developer experience, and platform reliability. Please note: for this role, we are prioritizing candidates who currently live in Seattle, WA Metro Area.

Responsibilities

Design and operate the core agent execution runtime responsible for scheduling, state management, and lifecycle management of long-running agentic workflows; Build robust multi-agent coordination patterns: task handoff, agent memory (short-term and long-term), tool use, and workflow branching at scale; Develop context window management strategies and session persistence layers for stateful agent interactions; Build tooling for prompt engineering as a first-class engineering discipline — versioning, testing, and evaluation of prompts at scale; Build platform capabilities that support developers working in AI-assisted coding workflows, including IDE integrations, local-first development environments, and fast iteration loops; Own and operate Agentic Platform services in AWS or OCI infrastructure provisioning, scaling, cost management, and reliability; Provision and manage cloud infrastructure using Terraform; manage Kubernetes application packaging and deployment with Helm; Participate in the 24/7 on-call rotation; Define and uphold SLOs; lead incident response, blameless post-mortems, and drive continuous reliability improvements; Instrument systems for observability: distributed tracing, structured logging, metrics dashboards, and alerting; Partner with engineering leadership to set technical direction and serve as a guide and mentor as the team grows; Drive architectural decisions that balance velocity with long-term maintainability across a distributed, cloud-native stack; Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, designers, and partner engineering teams to integrate agentic capabilities into the broader developer platform; Contribute to a culture of engineering excellence through design reviews, RFC processes, and mentorship

Requirements

12+ years of professional, hands-on, full-time software engineering experience in backend, infrastructure, or platform engineering; Cloud Platform Expertise (AWS/OCI/Azure/GCP): Proven, hands-on experience operating production services in AWS or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure compute, networking, managed services, IAM, and cost management. This is a must-have; the Agentic Platform is a cloud-native service running 24/7.; Service Ownership in a Cloud Setting: You have owned production services end-to-end — on-call, incident response, SLO definition, and post-mortems. You don't just build; you run what you build.; Distributed Systems Design: Deep understanding of fault tolerance, consistency, observability, and scalability in cloud-native environments; Backend Engineering Proficiency: Strong proficiency in at least one backend language used for systems work — Go, Python, Rust, or Java; Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience; Prioritizing candidates who currently live in Seattle, WA Metro Area.

Nice to have

Go: Professional proficiency in Go — Docker's primary language for backend systems; Infrastructure as Code: Experience with Terraform for cloud infrastructure provisioning and Helm for Kubernetes application packaging and deployment; Data Infrastructure: Experience with PostgreSQL and Redis / Pub-Sub patterns for state management, caching, and event-driven agent workflows; MCP & Agent Tooling: Experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol) server design and integration; Container & Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes, or equivalent — especially in the context of agent sandboxing and secure code execution environments; AI-assisted development tools: Familiarity with Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, Windsurf, etc. and the developer personas using them; Agent Evaluation: Experience with LLM-as-judge frameworks, behavioral regression testing, and golden dataset management; Agent Systems Experience: Hands-on experience building or operating AI agent systems — including multi-agent orchestration, tool use, memory systems, or agent evaluation frameworks; Open Source: Contributions or community engagement on relevant open source projects

Benefits

Remote-first by design – Work from your home, with offices in Seattle and Paris for connection and collaboration.; Flexibility that fits your life – We trust you to manage your schedule while delivering great work.; Time to recharge – Generous PTO, designated quarterly Whaleness Days, and a designated end-of-year Whaleness break.; Home office support – Set up your workspace for comfort and success.; Technology stipend – Equivalent to US$100 net per month to help support your work.; Learning & development – Annual stipend for conferences, courses, certifications, and continued learning.; Parental leave – 16 weeks of paid parental leave after six months of employment.; Equity for all full-time employees – Share in Docker's long-term success as we continue to grow.; Comprehensive benefits – Medical, retirement, and paid holidays vary by country.; Docker swag – Because representing the whale never gets old.