Principal Software Engineer, Docker Hardened Images

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.

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The role

Docker Hardened Images (DHI) is Docker's catalogue of security-hardened, enterprise-grade container images and Helm charts, built to be minimal, up-to-date, and safe to deploy in regulated and security-conscious environments. We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer to set the long-term technical direction for this catalogue and shape how the broader container security ecosystem evolves inside and beyond Docker.

At this level, you'll work across organizations, not just within one team. You'll set direction for major domains, resolve the highest-ambiguity problems in container supply chain security, and grow your impact through architectural leadership, cross-functional alignment, and influence on industry standards. This is a pure individual contributor role; influence comes through technical vision, design, and the ability to move organizations.

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Responsibilities

• Own the architecture for DHI as a platform, making high-leverage decisions that define how images and Helm charts are authored, secured, distributed, and evolved across the entire catalogue and across Docker's broader product surface.
• Define and drive multi-quarter technical roadmaps for the container hardening domain, balancing upstream velocity, supply chain security posture, customer compliance requirements, and long-term catalogue scalability.
• Identify systemic patterns from customer, operational, and upstream signals and translate them into architectural changes that span the catalogue, not just individual images or charts.
• Build alignment across teams and executives on technical strategy, tradeoffs, and sequencing, including product, security, infrastructure, and customer-facing functions.
• Represent Docker as a trusted technical voice in escalations, key enterprise customer engagements, and upstream OSS communities on issues that shape the future of secure container delivery.
• Set conventions and standards at scale, defining the patterns others build within for image definition, Helm chart adaptation, hardening strategy, and supply chain tooling (Sigstore, SBOM, SLSA), and evolving those standards as the ecosystem changes.
• Drive the hardest, most ambiguous packaging problems where the right answer requires reasoning across upstream dynamics, security tradeoffs, multi-arch constraints, and customer impact simultaneously.
• Shape the integration test infrastructure and developer tooling strategy so that DHI's engineering platform scales with the catalogue and raises quality across the team.
• Mentor and raise the technical ceiling for staff and senior engineers across the org, through review, design, and well-chosen architectural decisions that create durable leverage.
• Take part in the paid on-call rotation; respond to incidents, debug production issues, and drive systemic improvements in reliability.

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Qualifications

• 10+ years of backend engineering experience, including extensive work on production-grade, distributed systems at scale.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Ability to set multi-quarter technical roadmaps and align stakeholders (engineering, product, and executives) on strategy and tradeoffs.
• Deep expertise in the container and Kubernetes ecosystem: you have strong, grounded opinions about cert-manager, kyverno, grafana, istio, and similar projects, and you can reason about tradeoffs at the ecosystem level, not just the image level.
• Mastery of container supply chain security concepts (provenance, attestation, SBOM, signing, SLSA) and experience driving posture decisions across an organization rather than implementing them on a single project.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: code review, testing, source control, CI/CD, and Go sufficient to shape infrastructure and harness design.
• Track record of technical influence without authority across multiple teams or organizations, raising quality through design docs, standards, review, and mentorship.
• Experience navigating upstream OSS communities as a decision-maker, representing a downstream organization's requirements and shaping upstream direction on security-relevant issues.
• Comfort working across remote, distributed teams and communicating complex technical strategy clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.

BONUS BUT NOT REQUIRED

• Experience as a package maintainer at a Linux distribution, Homebrew, or comparable ecosystem.
• Hands-on experience implementing or operationalizing supply chain tooling (Sigstore, SBOM, SLSA) at org scale.
• Experience in regulated environments (FedRAMP, FIPS, PCI) with direct exposure to compliance requirements shaping engineering decisions.
• Prior Principal or Distinguished IC experience on a platform, security, or developer-tools team.
• Experience engaging directly with enterprise customers on container security architecture.

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WHAT TO EXPECT

FIRST 30 DAYS

• Align with leadership on the most critical org-wide technical risks and opportunities in container supply chain security.
• Develop a point of view on DHI's current architectural constraints and where the highest-leverage interventions are.
• Begin mapping the cross-functional landscape: product priorities, upstream pressures, customer compliance signals, and engineering gaps.

FIRST 90 DAYS

• Drive an architectural decision that unblocks multiple teams and reduces systemic risk across the catalogue.
• Establish a feedback loop from customer, operational, and upstream signals into the multi-quarter roadmap.
• Engage upstream OSS communities on at least one DHI-relevant issue with meaningful influence on direction.

FIRST YEAR

• Deliver a major platform or standards evolution with broad adoption across DHI and adjacent teams.
• Create durable alignment across engineering, product, and security on catalogue architecture, supply chain posture, and hardening strategy.
• Raise the technical ceiling for the engineers around you, measurably improving review quality, architectural consistency, and the team's ability to operate independently at a higher level.

Visa sponsorship: Docker considers visa sponsorship on a case-by-case basis based on business needs.

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COMPENSATION & EQUITY

All full-time roles include equity. Final compensation is determined on factors including but not limited to experience, skills, qualifications, and location.

Canada: CA$245,913 – CA$397,139 base

United States: $180,500 – $291,500 base

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POSTING INFORMATION

• Open vacancy: This posting is for an existing open role.
• AI in hiring: Docker may use AI-assisted tools during our recruiting process.
• Interview recordings: Candidates will be invited to opt in to interview recordings to support interviewer calibration and consistent evaluations. Recordings are optional and require explicit consent.

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PERKS & 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.

Docker is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a team that reflects a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. We believe diverse teams build better products, make better decisions, and better serve our global community.

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