Senior Software Engineer, Containers

Job description

**This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, which manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior Software Engineer, Containers based in the United States.** The Senior Software Engineer will design, build, and ship secure container technologies that help organizations develop and deploy software with greater confidence. Working within a small, autonomous engineering team, you will own projects end to end, from initial design through production deployment and early customer adoption. Your work will span container image build pipelines, registry infrastructure, developer tooling, and product features that improve security, performance, and usability. You will collaborate closely with product managers, customers, and engineering colleagues to make informed technical decisions and deliver meaningful results. The role also embraces AI-assisted development, offering opportunities to integrate coding agents into engineering workflows while maintaining strong security and quality standards. This remote-first opportunity is ideal for a proactive engineer who enjoys solving complex systems problems, working through ambiguity, and shaping products in a fast-growing technology environment. ### Accountabilities - Design, develop, and deliver new features, services, and infrastructure for secure container products, taking ownership from initial technical design through production release and customer adoption. - Build and improve container image production pipelines that transform software packages into hardened, signed, and attested images at scale. - Develop registry and distribution capabilities, including performance optimizations, efficient image delivery, and secure image-signing workflows. - Create product features that support customer image publishing, image customization, Helm charts, notifications, and compliance reporting. - Build tools that simplify adoption of secure container images, including migration utilities for existing Dockerfiles and integrations that enable AI agents to discover and use container resources. - Make sound decisions about technical scope, implementation priorities, sequencing, and delivery trade-offs, communicating risks early and maintaining momentum toward production releases. - Incorporate AI coding agents into development, code review, and operational workflows while helping establish safe and effective practices for their use. - Collaborate with product managers, customers, and cross-functional engineering teams to understand requirements, investigate issues, and deliver solutions that address real-world needs. - Maintain the reliability and observability of systems, participate in on-call responsibilities, and implement lasting fixes to prevent recurring incidents. - Contribute clear technical documentation, design proposals, pull request descriptions, and project updates to support effective collaboration within a distributed team. **Requirements:** - At least 3 years of experience building and operating software used by paying customers, ideally in a startup or high-growth technology environment. - Strong software engineering fundamentals in a systems programming language, preferably Go, with experience in API design, databases, caching, and cloud infrastructure on AWS or Google Cloud Platform. - Working knowledge of containers, container registries, the Open Container Initiative (OCI) image format, and Kubernetes. - Demonstrated ability to take ownership of ambiguous problems, work independently, identify solutions proactively, and seek assistance when needed. - Strong technical judgment, including the ability to balance delivery speed, engineering rigor, scope, and long-term maintainability. - A systems-oriented mindset and the ability to understand how changes affect build pipelines, registries, cloud infrastructure, and customer environments. - Regular experience using AI-powered coding agents and the ability to explain how these tools improve development productivity, code quality, or engineering outcomes. - Adaptability in a fast-changing environment, with the ability to adjust priorities and make progress when requirements are not fully defined. - A collaborative, low-ego approach, with a commitment to following through on responsibilities and communicating challenges or risks promptly. - Excellent written English and experience collaborating effectively with distributed, remote-first teams. - Familiarity with software supply chain security concepts, including software bills of materials (SBOMs), Sigstore signing, or SLSA build integrity frameworks, is an advantage. - Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform, contributions to open-source projects, or familiarity with open-source tools such as Wolfi, apko, and melange is beneficial. - A non-traditional path into software engineering is welcome; practical experience and a demonstrated ability to build effective solutions are valued. - Applicants must be able to work remotely from the United States. Candidates based in Canada, Germany, or the United Kingdom may also be considered. Employment visa sponsorship and relocation assistance are not available for this role. **Benefits:** - Annual base salary ranging from **$157,000 to $184,000 USD**. - Stock options upon hiring and promotion, with opportunities to participate in secondary offerings and a 10-year exercise window for options. - Remote-first working culture, with team meetups and twice-yearly destination summits. - Monthly stipend to help cover coworking space, phone, and internet expenses. - 100% coverage of health, vision, and dental insurance premiums for employees and their dependents. - Flexible paid time off to support rest, personal commitments, and sustainable performance. - Paid parental leave, including 18 weeks for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents, with flexibility to use the leave throughout the child's first year. - Opportunity to work on security-focused infrastructure and open-source technologies with meaningful impact on software development and AI adoption. - An engineering environment that values ownership, thoughtful action, customer focus, transparency, and continuous improvement.