Staff Software Engineer - Remote Platform Backend

Chainguard, Inc.; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible & Remote-First Culture

100% Covered Health Insurance

Stock options with 10-year exercise

Flexible Time Off

Parental Leave - 18 weeks

Job summary

Chainguard, Inc. is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the Customer Platform to own critical backend APIs and platform integrations. This remote-friendly role focuses on scalable systems, cross-team collaboration, and mentorship across Chainguard engineering teams.

You will design and evolve backend services, mentor engineers, and help extend AI-enabled product features while contributing to a product-driven roadmap with measurable outcomes.

Qualifications

• Strong ownership of API design and backend systems at scale.
• Experience working across multiple engineering teams to align technical standards, integration patterns, and shared infrastructure.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity with diagnosis, recommendation, and path forward.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and provide technical guidance without a management title.
• Familiarity with cloud-native environments (Kubernetes, cloud provider APIs) is a strong plus.
• Experience with entitlements, billing systems, or platform infrastructure is a plus.
• Prior exposure to building or extending AI-powered product features is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own features end-to-end: from design through implementation, rollout, and iteration, in close partnership with Product Management and the partner Chainguard teams.
• Design, build, and evolve the backend systems (Go, REST/gRPC APIs) that power Chainguard's entitlement, policy, and customer onboarding services
• Serve as the primary technical interface between Customer Platform and other Chainguard engineering teams (Containers, Libraries, OS packages) by understanding their requirements and building integration paths
• Extend Chainguard's agentic AI foundation into customer-facing product experiences
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to senior and mid-level engineers; help the team break down ambiguity and build toward clear outcomes
• Contribute to a product-driven roadmap with real deadlines and clear outcomes, helping the team prioritize tradeoffs and ship iteratively rather than waiting for "perfect”

Skills

API design

Backend systems

Cross-team collaboration

Mentoring engineers

Cloud-native environments

Tools

Kubernetes

Cloud provider APIs

Job description

Chainguard, Inc. is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the Customer Platform to own critical backend APIs and platform integrations. This remote-friendly role focuses on scalable systems, cross-team collaboration, and mentorship across Chainguard engineering teams.

You will design and evolve backend services, mentor engineers, and help extend AI-enabled product features while contributing to a product-driven roadmap with measurable outcomes.