Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Chainguard is the trusted source for open source, delivering hardened, secure, and production-ready builds of open source software. The Staff Software Engineer will own the Customer Platform, responsible for APIs and integration layers, while providing technical leadership and mentoring to the team.
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) — 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
- 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
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.
Company Overview