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

Docker is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the Docker AI Substrate team, a small, senior team building the foundation that brings sandboxed environments, verified images, and secure infrastructure for AI agents to the enterprise. The role involves shaping the architecture, building the core systems, and running what is built. Compensation for United States: $170,350 – $275,550 base. Final compensation is determined on factors including but not limited to experience, skills, qualifications, and location. Docker is an equal opportunity employer.

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, including production ownership, on-call, SLOs, incident response, and operational tooling; 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

Requirements

Built and operated a cloud control and management plane in production, with on-call responsibility; Kubernetes beyond deployment, including writing controllers or operators, reconciliation, and CRDs; deep hands-on experience in at least one major cloud (compute, networking, identity, managed services), able to pick up a second cloud quickly; production ownership including on-call, incident response, SLOs, and post-mortems; distributed systems design (fault tolerance, consistency, observability, idempotent reconciliation); professional proficiency in Go; 10+ years of professional software engineering in infrastructure, platform, or cloud services, with judgment to set direction for others

Nice to have

Kubernetes resource orchestration and cloud controllers, such as KRO; release engineering and software supply chain (OCI registries, digests, license compliance); private connectivity between cloud accounts (PrivateLink, VPC peering, service endpoints, egress policy); OpenTelemetry pipelines with multiple destinations; building managed services; Firecracker, microVMs, or other isolated execution environments for untrusted code; Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

Benefits

Remote-first work; flexible scheduling; generous PTO, quarterly Whaleness Days, and an end-of-year Whaleness break; home office support; technology stipend equivalent to US$100 net per month; annual learning and development stipend; 16 weeks of paid parental leave after six months of employment; equity for all full-time employees; comprehensive benefits (medical, retirement, and paid holidays vary by country); Docker swag; visa sponsorship considered case-by-case