Chainguard

Staff Software Engineer (Guarded Containers)

Work from home

Remote role where the employee must remain based in a particular country.

United States only

Employer listed it 7 weeks ago · Added 2 days ago

Been open since 7 weeks ago. Long-running listings are sometimes left up after the role is filled.

Salary

$205k to $231k per year

Location

United States only

Timezone

US East

Contract

Full-time

Experience

Lead

Remote flexibility

Work from home

This is a remote role, but the employee must be based in United States. It is work from home rather than work from anywhere.

What the employer says

Source listing states candidate location: "United States - Remote, Remote - US"

What Nomaders makes of it

Residency required in United States
Payroll and tax are likely handled in that country only

The quotes above are the employer's own words; the reading is ours. Always check the original listing and employment terms before working from another country.

About the role

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. By delivering hardened, secure, and production-ready builds of all the open source software engineers and AI agents rely on, Chainguard helps organizations build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk. Our customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and global industry leaders, including Anduril, Canva, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, OpenAI, Snap Inc., and Snowflake. Chainguard is venture-backed by leading investors, including Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis VC, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital.

Staff Software Engineer, Guarded Containers

The role, in a nutshell:

We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join our Guarded Containers team and help shape the future of Chainguard Images - our core product. This is a product-driven, feature-development role: you'll set technical direction for major new capabilities that expand what our product can do for customers, and you'll partner closely with product and engineering leadership to turn ambitious ideas into shipped, scalable features. Beyond your own hands-on work, you'll multiply the team's output — mentoring engineers, raising the technical bar, and helping decide what we build as much as how we build it

What you’ll do:

Architect and drive the development of major new features and services that make Chainguard Images more powerful, compelling, and valuable to customers — this is a feature-first role, not a maintenance role.

Partner with product, design, and engineering leadership to shape roadmap and scope high-impact initiatives, bringing a strong technical point of view to product decisions.

Set technical direction and make high-leverage architectural decisions that affect the team and adjacent teams, balancing customer impact, scalability, and long-term maintainability.

Lead the design and delivery of complex, cross-cutting projects from concept to production, often spanning multiple engineers or teams.

Mentor and level up other engineers, and act as a technical role model for how the team designs, builds, and ships.

Drive improvements to the tools and services that support our growing image build system, ensuring the platform scales cleanly alongside new product capabilities.

Champion a culture of craftsmanship, ownership, and continuous improvement — and hold the team to that standard.

What we're looking for:

Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience

10+ years of experience in software development, with deep fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, compilers, Makefiles, and toolchains

A strong product mindset — proven ability to translate ambiguous product goals into concrete technical plans, and to influence product direction with technical insight

Track record of leading complex, multi-engineer or cross-team technical initiatives from design through delivery

Deep expertise with containers, container registries, Docker, Kubernetes, and the broader ecosystem

Experience with Terraform or other Infrastructure as Code tools, including designing reusable, well-organized modules at scale

Strong experience writing services or tools in Go

Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and elevate technical practices across a team

Excellent communication skills, proficiency in English, and the ability to work autonomously, drive alignment across stakeholders, and take initiative without needing direction

Nice to haves

Author and/or contributor to open-source projects.

Requirements

The employer hasn't listed requirements separately, they're described in the role summary above and on the original listing.

Benefits

·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.

How to apply

1Check the flexibility label above, work from home, matches where you plan to live and work.
2Tailor your CV to the role at Chainguard, mentioning your remote working experience and working hours (US East).
3Apply directly on the employer's careers page using the button below. Nomaders never handles your application.

Found 3d ago. Last checked today. Always confirm the details on the original posting, salary and location can change after publication.

Listing sourced from Company boards.