Staff Software Engineer (Customer Platform)

The Role

The role, in a nutshell:

• Owns features end-to-end: from design through implementation, rollout, and iteration, in close partnership with Product Management and the partner Chainguard teams.
• Designs, builds, and evolves the backend systems (Go, REST/gRPC APIs) that power Chainguard's entitlement, policy, and customer onboarding services.
• Serves as the primary technical interface between Customer Platform and other Chainguard engineering teams (Containers, Libraries, OS packages).
• Extends Chainguard's agentic AI foundation into customer-facing product experiences.
• Provides technical leadership and mentorship to senior and mid-level engineers; helps the team break down ambiguity and build toward clear outcomes.
• Contributes to a product-driven roadmap with real deadlines and clear outcomes, helping the team prioritize tradeoffs and ship iteratively rather than waiting for "perfect."

What You'll Do

• Owns features end-to-end: from design through implementation, rollout, and iteration, in close partnership with Product Management and the partner Chainguard teams.
• Designs, builds, and evolves the backend systems (Go, REST/gRPC APIs) that power Chainguard's entitlement, policy, and customer onboarding services.
• Serves as the primary technical interface between Customer Platform and other Chainguard engineering teams (Containers, Libraries, OS packages).
• Extends Chainguard's agentic AI foundation into customer-facing product experiences.
• Provides technical leadership and mentorship to senior and mid-level engineers; helps the team break down ambiguity and build toward clear outcomes.
• Contributes to a product-driven roadmap with real deadlines and clear outcomes, helping the team prioritize tradeoffs and ship iteratively rather than waiting for "perfect."

What We're Looking For

• Production Go experience is a must. At the staff level, the expectation is deep, idiomatic Go, not "willing to learn."
• Strong ownership of API design and backend systems at scale; you've shipped and operated them in production.
• Experience working across multiple engineering teams to align on technical standards, integration patterns, and shared infrastructure.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity; you come with a diagnosis, a recommendation, and a path forward, not just a problem statement.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and provide technical guidance without needing a management title to do it.
• Familiarity with cloud-native environments (Kubernetes, cloud provider APIs) is a strong plus.
• Experience with entitlements, billing systems, or platform infrastructure is a plus but not required.
• Prior exposure to building or extending AI-powered product features is a plus.

About Us

• We live and breathe our company values:
• We are customer obsessed — We focus on delivering solutions to our customers that create value and make their lives better.
• We have a bias for intentional action — We prioritize, plan, try things, and fail fast.
• We don't take ourselves too seriously (but we do serious work) — We are solving an important problem which takes focus, but we also like to enjoy the journey.
• We trust each other and assume good intentions — We're transparent with decisions to empower team members to make well informed decisions.

Benefits

• A 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 (yes, you read that correctly: 10 years!)
• 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.

Pay

Base Salary Range: $205,000 - $231,000 USD

Contact

If your experience is close but doesn't fulfill all requirements, please apply. We're building the best team in technology and are focused on hiring "Chainguardians" with unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences.

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.

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