Principal Forward Deployed Engineer

OpenKrill; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Docker is a globally distributed, remote-first team building tools for software deployment and AI-driven workflows. FDEs embed with customers to design, prototype, and roll out solutions that leverage Docker products and patterns.

You will collaborate with Solutions Architects, Product, and Engineering to scale patterns and drive customer success. The role emphasizes security, governance, and automation across diverse environments, with strong emphasis on end-to-end delivery and influence across

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience with customer-facing roles preferred.
• Expert production coding skills in Go, Python, or TypeScript.
• Deep Docker expertise including Dockerfiles, multi-stage builds, and registries.

Responsibilities

• Embed with customer engineering teams to design, build, and ship production-ready solutions.
• Deliver technical artifacts and reference architectures for customer deployments.
• Integrate Docker AI platform with customers' stacks (identity, secrets, registries, Kubernetes, CI/CD).
• Own delivery scope, sequencing, trade-offs, and contribute code when needed.

Skills

Go

Python

TypeScript

LLMs

Agent frameworks

Cloud platforms

Security

Communication

Mentorship

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Git

AWS

Environments with Okta/OIDC

Job description

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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Docker Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE) embed directly with our most strategic customers to solve important, complex technical problems and turn ambitious ideas into production outcomes. FDEs take on the most challenging technical challenges using existing Docker products and patterns when possible, and work across customer, Docker Product and Engineering teams to realize new approaches when required.

As a Docker FDE, you will work side- by-side with customer engineering teams to deeply understand their goals, problems, constraints, and technical landscape; identify the highest-leverage opportunities; and design, build, and ship solutions with them. You own the technical journey from discovery and architecture through prototyping, implementation and production rollout.

The solutions you build may use existing Docker products, extend Docker into new environments, integrate deeply with customer and third-party systems, or reveal capabilities that Docker should build next. You work closely with Docker Solutions Architects to evolve existing patterns, and Docker Product and Engineering to turn new learnings into reusable patterns and product capabilities.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Build in Production with Customers

• Embed with customer engineering teams to design, build, and ship solutions from first prototype through stable production rollout. Use existing Docker products and patterns when possible, invent, prototype and validate innovative solutions when necessary.


• Deliver working technical artifacts to customers: custom MCP servers with tightly integrated Docker Sandbox environments for coding agents and containerized agents; Docker Compose definitions for multi-agent harnesses and model-backed applications; Hardened Image standardization and migration; New tools that unblock customer progress.


• Integrate Docker\'s AI platform with the customer\'s existing stack, including identity providers (OIDC/SAML/SSO), secrets management, private and air-gapped registries, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, and observability tooling.


• Own technical delivery on your engagements: scope the work, sequence it, make trade-offs between speed and quality, remove blockers early, and contribute directly to code whenever progress depends on it.

Make AI Adoption Safe and Governable

• Translate customer security, compliance, and platform requirements into concrete plans and see those plans through from ideation to production.


• Help customers define controls to enable them to adopt agentic AI to solve their unique business problems without compromising security, compliance, data sovereignty or end-user experience.


• Establish quality and performance standards for customers and work closely with Docker Product and Engineering to quickly address issues that fall outside of established thresholds


• Partner with customer security and platform teams to get agentic workloads through architecture review, threat modeling, and change control.

Partner with Solutions Architecture and the Field

• Work closely with Solutions Architects to enable off-the-self solutions when possible and provide technical experience and leadership when a bespoke solution is necessary.


• Feed implementation learnings back into reference architectures, SOW templates, and success patterns so that FDE innovations become standard features and implementation patterns.


• Support the field with technical depth during proofs of concept, escalations, and expansion conversations when a working build is the fastest path to a customer adoption.

Close the Loop with Product and Engineering

• As part of Docker Engineering FDEs work closely with Product and Engineering teams to fold FDE innovations, learnings, and design patterns into existing or new products and services.


• Work with Customers, Product and Engineering to establish quality and performance thresholds, ensuring customer environments meet them consistently, and responding quickly and decisively when they don\'t.


• Be the voice of the customer. Deliver data-driven and actionable feedback to Product and Engineering: what works well; what does not; what customers are asking for; and what blocks their adoption and forward progress. FDE experience directly influences the roadmap.

Shape the Practice

• Define the FDE engagement model, delivery standards, and quality bar, and codify them so that engagements are consistent across customers, regions, and delivery partners.


• Mentor and lead other Forward Deployed Engineers, and participate in hiring loops to grow the team.


• Act as the senior technical escalation point on the hardest problems impacting your customers. Every incident is an opportunity to improve Docker products and services.


• Maintain deep, current knowledge of the agentic AI stack: LLMs, APIs, MCP, coding agents, model and harness evaluation approaches, performance and quality thresholds, deployment patterns.


• This role may require participation in an on-call rotation to provide support outside of standard business hours, including evenings, weekends, and holidays, as needed.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years in a customer-facing technical role such as Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, Professional Services Engineer, or Software Engineer with consulting or technical founder experience.


• Technical leadership across multiple engagements, teams, or domains, with a proven ability to set delivery standards, define repeatable patterns, and influence product direction through field evidence.


• Expert production coding skills in Go, Python, or TypeScript, with a track record of shipping and operating software that other people depend on and of leading technical design reviews.


• Deep, hands-on Docker expertise: Dockerfiles and multi-stage builds, Docker Compose, image and registry operations, container networking and storage, and container security fundamentals.


• Hands-on experience building with LLMs and agents in production, including tool use and function calling, the Model Context Protocol (MCP server and client implementation), prompt and context engineering, and evaluation of agent behavior.


• Working knowledge of software supply chain security: SBOMs, image signing and attestation, vulnerability management, minimal and hardened base images, and secure CI/CD.


• Experience integrating with enterprise systems: identity providers (Okta, Entra ID, LDAP/Active Directory), federated identity protocols (OIDC, SAML), secrets managers, Kubernetes, and at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, GCP).


• Ability to scope and deliver complex work in ambiguous, fast-moving customer environments, making sound trade-offs between scope, speed, and quality.


• Excellent communication skills with engineers, security and platform teams, and executive stakeholders, with a low-ego, collaborative approach and the ability to lead through influence rather than authority.


• Proven track record of technical mentorship and of raising the bar for the engineers around you.


• High agency and comfort operating autonomously in distributed, remote-first teams.