Principal Software Engineer, Developer Tools

🕒 June 26

🇺🇸 United States – Remote

💵 $198k - $319k / year

⏰ Full Time

🔴 Lead

🧑‍💻 Full-stack Engineer

👻 Ghost score 9%

What it means: how likely this posting is sitting open without active hiring.How to read it: 60% or higher means we think this is a ghost. Lower scores are less of a worry.How we score it: age, reposts, open roles vs team size, how fast jobs close, and whether pay is listed.Fine print: an estimate from public data, not a judgment of the company. Real jobs can score high, so treat it as a hint, not a fact.

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Docker, Inc

WebsiteLinkedInAll Job Openings

51 - 200 employees

💼 Consulting

☁️ SaaS

💰 $105M Series C on 2022-03

Consulting • SaaS

Docker, Inc is a company that simplifies the lives of developers by tackling the complexity of app development. They offer tools that allow developers to bring their ideas to life through containerization and orchestration, making the development process easier and more efficient. Docker's products, including Docker Desktop and Docker Hub, are widely adopted by millions of developers worldwide, enhancing workflows and providing an integrated development pipeline.

📋 Description

• Define the long-term technical vision and architecture for Docker's developer tooling platform spanning platform engineering, CI/CD, and AI-powered tools • Lead authoring of SDLC tenets in partnership with other principal engineers, Security, and Infrastructure and build the mechanisms those tenets bind to (design gates, code review gates, pipeline standards, visibility) • Establish architectural patterns, technical standards, and best practices across the developer tooling stack • Design highly available, scalable infrastructure for hosting developer tools, agents, and platform services • Drive technical decisions on tooling choices, provider strategies, build/deploy substrate, and agent orchestration frameworks • Partner with Senior Manager and product leadership to align technical architecture with business objectives and productization opportunities • Architect and build Docker's internal developer platform, the self-service substrate enabling teams to scaffold, deploy, and operate services with minimal friction • Design and implement CI/CD and build infrastructure that supports Docker's SDLC tenets and GitOps deployment patterns • Establish reliability, security, and performance standards across developer tooling including SLOs, monitoring, incident response, and cost management • Design integration points between developer tools and existing infrastructure (CI/CD pipelines, observability platforms, deployment systems) • Evaluate emerging technologies across developer tooling, platform engineering, AI/LLM, and agent frameworks to inform Docker's technical strategy • Define and enforce the golden path, the concrete, left-to-right walkthrough of how Docker builds software, and identify where tooling closes gaps vs. where human process does • Drive technical standards for measuring developer tool effectiveness: adoption metrics, productivity gains, pipeline performance, and developer satisfaction • Lead cross-functional technical discussions influencing company-wide developer tooling architecture • Define technical approach for productizing successful internal developer tools into customer-facing offerings • Mentor senior and staff engineers on platform engineering, CI/CD patterns, design, and AI/LLM integration • Lead design reviews and technical decision-making across all developer tooling work • Foster culture of technical excellence, experimentation, and rapid prototyping within the Developer Tools team • Serve as primary technical contact and thought leader for developer tooling across Docker's engineering organization • Collaborate with platform teams (Infrastructure, Security, Agentic Platform, Supply Chain Security) to establish shared technical standards and integration patterns

🎯 Requirements

• 10+ years software engineering experience with 3+ years in Staff or Principal Engineer roles • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. • Proven track record architecting and operating developer-facing platforms, internal tools, or developer productivity systems at scale • Deep expertise in CI/CD systems, build infrastructure, and GitOps deployment patterns • Production experience with cloud-native infrastructure including Kubernetes, observability systems (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki), and deployment tooling • Experience designing self-service platforms, developer portals, or golden path tooling that enable other teams to move faster • Working knowledge of AI/ML technologies and hands-on experience with LLM APIs or AI agent development • Proficiency in Go (preferred), Rust, Java, or Python with strong software engineering fundamentals • Exceptional product and platform mindset considering developer experience, business outcomes, and technical/security trade-offs • Strong communication skills with ability to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders • Track record of technical mentorship and elevating engineering teams' capabilities • Ownership mentality with bias for action and iterative delivery in ambiguous, fast-moving environments • Comfortable with autonomous work in distributed, remote-first teams across multiple time zones • Experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol) or similar AI agent integration standards (preferred) • Background in DevOps, SRE, or platform engineering domains (preferred) • Contributions to open source developer tooling, platform engineering, or observability projects (preferred) • Experience productizing internal platforms into commercial offerings (preferred) • Deep knowledge of security, compliance, and operational best practices for production systems (preferred) • Experience with infrastructure-as-code frameworks (Terraform, Pulumi) and multi-cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) (preferred) • Track record driving org-wide adoption of developer tooling and engineering standards (preferred)

🏖️ Benefits

• Freedom & flexibility; fit your work around your life • Designated quarterly Whaleness Days plus end of year Whaleness break • Home office setup; we want you comfortable while you work • 16 weeks of paid Parental leave (after 6 months of employment) • Technology stipend equivalent to $100 USD net/month • PTO plan that encourages you to take time to do the things you enjoy • Training stipend for conferences, courses and classes • Equity; we are a growing start-up and want all employees to have a share in the success of the company • Docker Swag • Medical benefits, retirement and holidays vary by country • Remote-first culture, with offices in Seattle and Paris