Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. By delivering hardened, secure, and production-ready builds of all the open source software engineers and AI agents rely on, Chainguard helps organizations build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk.Chainguard delivers the industry's most secure container images: minimal, zero-CVE, rebuilt daily from source. This role sits on our Package and Image Automation team, part of Sustaining Automation — the group that owns the automation underpinning our entire image factory. As we scale the number of ecosystems and images we support, this team builds and maintains the systems that keep packages and images current, tested, and building cleanly with as little manual intervention as possible.As a Staff Engineer, you'll be a technical leader and driver of vision for this squad. You'll design systems, build AI-powered tooling, help set the roadmap, and raise the bar for engineering quality across the team. You'll partner closely with engineering leadership on planning and direction, not just execution.This is a high-impact role at the intersection of developer tooling, AI/agents, and supply chain security.What you'll doDrive the technical vision: Help set the roadmap and priorities for the squad, partnering with engineering leadership in ongoing planning cycles rather than a single fixed plan.Architect the automation platform: Design the end-to-end system that orchestrates package creation, test generation, and image building. Own technical decisions that need to scale.Build AI-powered tooling: Develop LLM-integrated, agentic pipelines for manifest generation, test scaffolding, and validation. Design prompt architectures, evaluation loops, and quality gates.Write production Go: This is a hands-on role — you'll build CLI tools, services, and integrations alongside your team.Build quality tooling: Develop tooling and automation that improves customer reliability, including test generators, validation frameworks, and quality gates.Mentor and raise the bar: Help less experienced teammates level up, especially where their background is strong in one area (e.g., OS/distro internals or service maintenance) and lighter in another.Collaborate across a distributed team: Work closely with teammates across time zones (primarily US/Canada, with close collaboration across EU and India-based colleagues on adjacent squads).What we're looking for7+ years of software engineering experience, with a track record of designing and building complex systemsStrong Go expertiseExperience with AI/LLM integration: building systems that use language models for code generation, automation, or developer tooling; some exposure to agentic workflows is a strong plusSystems architecture skills: ability to design loosely-coupled, scalable systems and make pragmatic trade-offsExperience building developer tools, CLIs, or automation platformsDeep Linux and build systems knowledge: experience with package managers (apk, apt, rpm), build tools (Make, Bazel, language-specific toolchains), and containerizationContainer ecosystem expertise: Docker, OCI, container registries, KubernetesDemonstrated ability to help shape team direction: comfortable influencing roadmap and priorities, not just implementing themStrong communication skills: ability to write clear technical documents, work autonomously, and collaborate across teams and time zonesBased in the US or CanadaNice to havesExperience working on or contributing to a Linux distribution (e.g., Wolfi, Red Hat, Ubuntu, or similar)Background maintaining a large number of services in productionContributions to open-source projectsFamiliarity with software supply chain security (SBOM, provenance, signing)Experience with melange, apko, or WolfiUnderstanding of compliance frameworks (FedRAMP, FIPS, STIG)#### About UsWe live and breathe our company values:We are customer obsessed — We focus on delivering solutions to our customers that create value and make their lives better.We have a bias for intentional action — We prioritize, plan, try things, and fail fast.We don't take ourselves too seriously (but we do serious work) — We are solving an important problem which takes focus, but we also like to enjoy the journey.We trust each other and assume good intentions — We're transparent with decisions to empower team members to make well informed decisions.A few of the benefits we offer:Flexible & Remote-First Culture: Work remotely with team meetup opportunities, bi-annual destination summits, and a monthly stipend for coworking spaces, phone and internet costs.Our Approach to Equity: Receive stock options upon hire and promotion. Plus, you can participate in secondary offerings and have 10 years to exercise your options (yes, you read that correctly: 10 years!).100% Covered Health Insurance: We cover 100% of your health, vision and dental insurance premiums for you and your dependents. Nothing comes out of your paycheck.∞ Flexible Time Off: Take the time you need – to do our best work, we need to recharge and reset.18 Weeks Paid Parental Leave: We offer 18 weeks for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents, with the option to use it all at once or throughout your child's first year.If your experience is close but doesn't fulfill all requirements, please apply. We're building the best team in technology and are focused on hiring "Chainguardians" with unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences.Chainguard is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.
7 days ago