Principal Software Engineer, AI-Driven Containers (Remote)

Chainguard; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible & Remote-First Culture: Work远

Equity stock options at hire and for 1

100% Covered Health Insurance

Flexible Time Off

18 Weeks Paid Parental Leave

Job summary

Chainguard is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for Chainguard Containers. You will set the technical direction for the build pipeline, registry, and adoption tooling, guiding a multi‑team effort toward secure, production‑grade container solutions.

You’ll stay hands-on, review designs, and lead engineers across sub-teams while collaborating with product and AI tooling to shape a scalable, policy‑driven foundation for our customers. Remote-first, US-focused.

Qualifications

• 10+ years building and operating software for paying customers.
• Experience leading multi-team projects in a startup or hyper-growth company.
• Strong knowledge of container images, registries, OCI image format and security.
• Experience with software supply chain security (SBOMs, Sigstore).
• Excellent written English; remote-first leadership.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for Chainguard Containers including the build pipeline, the registry, and adoption tooling.
• Lead multi-team projects from concept through production and adoption.
• Review designs and code, raise the bar for quality and security.
• Work with AI coding agents and set safe usage standards.
• Represent Chainguard in container/open-source ecosystems.

Skills

Container images

Container registries

Go

System architecture

AI-native development

Distributed systems

Tools

Kubernetes

Sigstore

Wolfi

apko

melange

Docker

Job description

Chainguard is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for Chainguard Containers. You will set the technical direction for the build pipeline, registry, and adoption tooling, guiding a multi‑team effort toward secure, production‑grade container solutions.

You’ll stay hands-on, review designs, and lead engineers across sub-teams while collaborating with product and AI tooling to shape a scalable, policy‑driven foundation for our customers. Remote-first, US-focused.