Principal Software Engineer, Containers

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will define the technical direction of a core container technology platform that helps organizations build, deploy, and operate software securely at scale. You will lead the design and delivery of critical systems spanning hardened container images, image build pipelines, registry infrastructure, and developer adoption tools. This is a senior individual contributor role where your technical expertise and architectural judgment will influence product strategy and engineering execution. Working closely with engineering and product leaders, you will turn complex business objectives into long-term roadmaps and high-impact, multi-team initiatives. You will remain hands-on with architecture, coding, and code reviews while mentoring experienced engineers and advancing the safe use of AI-powered development tools. This remote opportunity is ideal for a technically influential leader passionate about open-source software, cloud infrastructure, and software supply chain security.

• Professional Experience: At least 10 years of experience building and operating software used by paying customers, including several years leading large, multi-team technical initiatives in a startup or high-growth environment.

• Container and Infrastructure Expertise: Significant experience in one or more closely related areas, such as container images, container registries, the Open Container Initiative (OCI) image format, Linux distributions, package management, build systems, or software supply chain security.

• Technical Leadership: A demonstrated record of setting technical direction and delivering results through influence rather than formal management authority, including leading engineers across multiple teams.

• Strategic Planning: Experience developing and executing technical roadmaps with engineering and product leaders, managing competing priorities, making difficult trade-offs, and maintaining delivery commitments.

• Architectural Judgment: Strong systems-thinking skills and the ability to design across the full software supply chain, from upstream source code and build processes to signing, distribution, and customer runtime environments.

• Go Development: Deep architectural proficiency in Go, including the ability to design and build services from the ground up.

• Cloud and Backend Engineering: Strong knowledge of API design, databases, caching, and cloud infrastructure, particularly Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or Amazon Web Services (AWS).

• AI-Enabled Development: Regular use of AI-powered and agentic coding tools, with demonstrated experience improving how engineering teams build, review, or operate software through these technologies.

• Communication and Collaboration: Excellent written and verbal communication skills, strong technical documentation practices, and experience leading effectively within distributed, remote-first teams.

• Ownership and Initiative: A proactive, high-agency approach to solving problems, unblocking others, communicating risks early, and following through on commitments with humility and accountability.

• Industry Recognition: Evidence of technical contributions beyond a current employer, such as maintaining open-source projects, shaping standards, publishing technical content, speaking at industry events, or building widely recognized systems.

• Preferred Security Expertise: Experience with software bills of materials (SBOMs), Sigstore signing, or SLSA frameworks for software build integrity.

• Preferred Open-Source Contributions: Experience maintaining or contributing significantly to projects such as Wolfi, apko, melange, containerd, Kubernetes, or OCI specifications.

• Additional Preferred Skills: Experience scaling a product from early customers to broad adoption, familiarity with Terraform or other infrastructure-as-code tools, or a non-traditional path into software engineering.

• Work Location and Authorization: The role is remote, with candidates in the United States preferred. Applicants in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany may also be considered. Employment visa sponsorship and relocation assistance are not available.