Staff Software Engineer, Sustaining Automation
Staff engineer on Chainguard's Package and Image Automation team, driving the technical vision and architecture for the automation behind its secure, zero-CVE container image factory. Day to day: building LLM/agentic tooling and production Go services, scaling the build/test pipeline, and mentoring while shaping the roadmap.
- Compensation
- $205K–$231K / yr
- Location
- United States - Remote
- Work setup
- Remote
- Seniority
- Staff
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 7+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 7+ years of software engineering experience with a track record designing and building complex systems
- Strong Go expertise
- Experience with AI/LLM integration (code generation, automation, developer tooling); agentic workflows a strong plus
- Systems architecture skills: designing loosely-coupled, scalable systems with pragmatic trade-offs
- Experience building developer tools, CLIs, or automation platforms
- Deep Linux and build systems knowledge: package managers (apk, apt, rpm), build tools (Make, Bazel, language toolchains), containerization
- Container ecosystem expertise: Docker, OCI, container registries, Kubernetes
- Demonstrated ability to shape team direction and influence roadmap and priorities
- Strong communication skills: clear technical writing, autonomy, cross-team and cross-time-zone collaboration
- Based in the US or Canada
Nice to have
- Experience working on or contributing to a Linux distribution (e.g., Wolfi, Red Hat, Ubuntu)
- Background maintaining a large number of services in production
- Contributions to open-source projects
- Familiarity with software supply chain security (SBOM, provenance, signing)
- Experience with melange, apko, or Wolfi
- Understanding of compliance frameworks (FedRAMP, FIPS, STIG)
Full description
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.
Who we are
At Chainguard, we are on a mission to secure the software supply chain by default. Our team is founded by the industry's leading experts on open source software, security, and cloud native development.
Chainguard's product portfolio includes Chainguard Images and Chainguard Services. Customers range from Fortune 500 companies in banking, fintech, government, and infrastructure to startups and SMBs. Join us as we help organizations secure their software supply chain from source to production.
The role, in a nutshell
Chainguard delivers the industry's most secure container images: minimal, zero-CVE, rebuilt daily from source. This role sits on our Package and Image Automation team, part of Sustaining Automation — the group that owns the automation underpinning our entire image factory. As we scale the number of ecosystems and images we support, this team builds and maintains the systems that keep packages and images current, tested, and building cleanly with as little manual intervention as possible.
As a Staff Engineer, you'll be a technical leader and driver of vision for this squad. You'll design systems, build AI-powered tooling, help set the roadmap, and raise the bar for engineering quality across the team. You'll partner closely with engineering leadership on planning and direction, not just execution.
This is a high-impact role at the intersection of developer tooling, AI/agents, and supply chain security.
What you'll do
- Drive the technical vision: Help set the roadmap and priorities for the squad, partnering with engineering leadership in ongoing planning cycles rather than a single fixed plan.
- Architect the automation platform: Design the end-to-end system that orchestrates package creation, test generation, and image building. Own technical decisions that need to scale.
- Build AI-powered tooling: Develop LLM-integrated, agentic pipelines for manifest generation, test scaffolding, and validation. Design prompt architectures, evaluation loops, and quality gates.