Staff Software Engineer: AI-Powered DevTools & Security

Chainguard; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 205,000 - 231,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-friendly culture

Stock options

Health insurance 100% coverage

Flexible time off

18 weeks parental leave

Job summary

Chainguard seeks a Staff Engineer to lead the Package and Image Automation squad. You will design scalable systems, build AI-powered tooling, and guide the roadmap while coding hands-on in Go alongside the team.

You’ll collaborate across time zones with US/Canada-based teammates and EU/India partners, delivering secure, production-ready container images and automation that scales with the company’s security and compliance goals.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience with designing and building complex systems.
• Experience with AI/LLM integration: code generation, automation, or tooling; exposure to agentic workflows is a plus.
• Strong systems-architecture skills to design loosely-coupled, scalable platforms.
• Experience building developer tools, CLIs, or automation platforms.
• Deep Linux and build systems knowledge: package managers, build tools, and containerization.
• Ability to influence roadmap and team priorities, not just implement them.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, autonomous work style, cross-time-zone collaboration.
• Based in the US or Canada.

Responsibilities

• Drive the squad's technical vision and roadmap with engineering leadership.
• Architect the automation platform for package creation, testing, and image building.
• Build AI-powered tooling, pipelines, and quality gates for manifest generation and testing.
• Write production-grade Go code for CLI tools, services, and integrations.
• Develop tooling to improve customer reliability, including test generators and validation frameworks.
• Mentor teammates and raise the bar across OS/distro internals and service maintenance.
• Collaborate with distributed teams across US/Canada, EU, and India for adjacent squads.

Skills

AI/LLM integration

Systems architecture

Developer tools/CLIs

Linux/build systems

Roadmap planning

Cross-team collaboration

Technical writing

US/Canada base

Tools

Make

Bazel

apk/apt/rpm

Containerization

Job description

Chainguard seeks a Staff Engineer to lead the Package and Image Automation squad. You will design scalable systems, build AI-powered tooling, and guide the roadmap while coding hands-on in Go alongside the team.

You’ll collaborate across time zones with US/Canada-based teammates and EU/India partners, delivering secure, production-ready container images and automation that scales with the company’s security and compliance goals.