Customer Support Manager

Chainguard; United States; On-site; USD 140,000 - 165,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible & Remote-First Culture

Equity options upon hiring

100% Covered Health Insurance

Flexible Time Off

18 Weeks Paid Parental Leave

Job summary

Chainguard is looking for a Manager for their AMER Technical Support Engineering team. In this role, you'll drive quality and reliability in support escalations, and ensure effective team development and operational discipline.

The ideal candidate will have at least 4 years of management experience in a technical support setting, strong skills in Linux, and excellent written communication abilities. This role allows for remote work with flexible hours and a supportive work culture.

Qualifications

• 4+ years managing technical support engineers or software engineers in a production-facing environment.
• Demonstrated ability to design and operate an escalation process.
• Technical credibility in the Linux ecosystem.
• Strong written communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Manage, coach, support, and develop the AMER Technical Support Engineering team.
• Own the L2/L3 escalation boundary and track escalation health metrics.
• Own the support tooling stack and partner with engineering.

Skills

Technical support engineering management

Linux ecosystem

Strong written communication

Tools

Zendesk

Container security

Kubernetes

Job description

The Role, In a Nutshell

You will manage the AMER Technical Support Engineering team as part of a global follow‑the‑sun support organization under Engineering. Your primary accountability is the quality and reliability of the escalation path: from customer‑reported issue to engineering resolution. You own the operational layer between L2 and L3, which means you think about ticket routing, escalation criteria, handoff quality, and engineering capacity as an interconnected system, not as separate concerns.

What You'll Do

Escalation Operations

• Own the L2/L3 escalation boundary: define routing criteria, review escalation quality, and drive down unnecessary L3 load without increasing customer time‑to‑resolution.
• Maintain and improve escalation intake workflows including triage standards, ticket hygiene, and handoff artifacts for engineering partners.
• Track escalation health metrics and report on trends to engineering leadership; identify capacity risks in engineering teams before they become bottlenecks.
• Run escalation retrospectives to close the loop on resolution patterns and feed signal back into product and documentation.

Team Development

• Manage, coach, support and develop the AMER Technical Support Engineering team, with direct attention to technical depth and debugging rigor.
• Operate career leveling frameworks for IC growth (L1 through L6); hold bar on promotions and ensure growth plans are actionable.
• Coordinate AMER handoffs with APAC and EMEA peer managers to maintain follow‑the‑sun coverage quality: clear ownership at every handoff, with uninterrupted SLA performance.
• Identify and close skill gaps proactively, particularly in Linux fundamentals, container security, and Kubernetes ecosystems.

Tooling and Automation

• Own the support tooling stack including ticketing systems, AI‑assisted triage, and deflection tooling.
• Partner with engineering to build and maintain LLM‑assisted workflows for escalation intake, ticket quality review, and knowledge retrieval.
• Drive adoption of AI tooling across the team; know where automation adds leverage and where it introduces risk.
• Use support data to surface product quality signals and operational trends to engineering and product leadership.

Cross‑Functional Execution

• Serve as the primary interface between Technical Support Engineering and product engineering teams for escalated issues.
• Maintain a functional relationship with Customer Success and GTM without allowing those teams to define support quality standards or escalation criteria.
• Contribute to product feedback loops through reproducible, well‑scoped bug reports and actionable pattern analysis.

What We Are Looking For

• 4+ years managing technical support engineers or software engineers in a production‑facing environment.
• Demonstrated ability to design and operate an escalation process: not just follow one.
• Technical credibility in the Linux ecosystem; comfortable reading logs, understanding container runtimes, and engaging with engineering teams as an active peer.
• Strong written communication; capable of writing clear escalation summaries, retrospective reports, and leadership‑facing metrics briefs.
• Track record of developing engineers through real feedback, structured growth plans, and calibrated performance conversations.
• Comfort operating in a globally distributed support org with peer managers in other regions; strong handoff discipline.

Nice To Have

• Experience with container security, DevSecOps tooling, Kubernetes, or open source software ecosystems.
• Familiarity with Zendesk or similar ticketing platforms at an operational level (workflows, configuration, reporting).
• Exposure to AI‑assisted support tooling, LLM‑based triage, or knowledge retrieval systems.

How This Role Is Measured

Your success will be evaluated on outcomes that require both technical judgment and operational discipline.

• L3 escalation score (quality and completeness of escalations reaching engineering).
• Mean time to resolution on P0 and P1 tickets.
• L2 deflection rate with explicit accounting for customer time‑to‑resolution, not raw deflection volume.
• Engineer retention and growth within your team.
• Coverage model reliability: no dropped handoffs, no SLA misses due to scheduling gaps.

Base Salary Range: $140,000—$165,000 USD

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.
• 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.

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.

By submitting your application, you acknowledge that Chainguard will process your personal data in accordance with Chainguard's Global Candidate Privacy Notice.