Staff Software Engineer, Sustaining - Chainguard

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source software security. 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 such as Anduril, Canva, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, OpenAI, Snap Inc., and Snowflake.

Who We Are

At Chainguard, we are on a mission to secure the software supply chain by default. Our team was founded by leading experts in open source software, security, and cloud-native development. Chainguard's product portfolio includes Chainguard Images and Chainguard Services.

The Role

Chainguard delivers minimal, zero-CVE container images 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 image factory. As we scale ecosystems and image offerings, this team builds and maintains the systems keeping packages and images current, tested, and building cleanly with minimal manual intervention.

As a Staff Engineer, you will be a technical leader driving the vision for this squad. You will design systems, build AI-powered tooling, set team roadmaps, and raise engineering quality across the team in close partnership with engineering leadership.

What You'll Do

• Drive the Technical Vision: Help set squad roadmaps and priorities in ongoing planning cycles with engineering leadership.
• Architect the Automation Platform: Design end-to-end systems orchestrating package creation, test generation, and image building at 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.
• Write Production Go: Hands-on development of CLI tools, services, and core platform integrations.
• Build Quality Tooling: Create test generators, validation frameworks, and quality gates to enhance customer reliability.
• Mentor Teammates: Level up engineers across domain areas like OS/distro internals and service maintenance.
• Collaborate Across a Distributed Team: Work closely with colleagues across US/Canada time zones, alongside EU and India-based teams.

What We're Looking For

• 7+ years of software engineering experience designing and building complex systems
• Strong Go expertise
• Experience integrating AI/LLMs into code generation, automation, or developer tooling (agentic workflows are a plus)
• Systems architecture skills with a focus on loosely-coupled, scalable systems
• Experience building developer tools, CLIs, or automation platforms
• Deep Linux and build systems knowledge (apk, apt, rpm, Make, Bazel, containerization)
• Container ecosystem expertise (Docker, OCI, registries, Kubernetes)
• Ability to influence product roadmaps and shape team technical direction
• Strong written and verbal technical communication skills
• Must be based in the US or Canada

Nice to Haves

• Contributions to or maintenance of Linux distributions (e.g., Wolfi, Red Hat, Ubuntu)
• Background maintaining large production service fleets
• Open-source project contributions
• Familiarity with software supply chain security (SBOM, provenance, signing)
• Experience with melange, apko, or Wolfi
• Understanding of compliance frameworks (FedRAMP, FIPS, STIG)

Benefits & Perks

• Flexible & Remote-First Culture: Remote work with team meetups, bi-annual summits, and monthly stipends for coworking spaces, phone, and internet.
• Equity: Stock options upon hire and promotion with a 10-year exercise window.
• 100% Covered Health Insurance: 100% coverage for medical, dental, and vision premiums for employees and dependents.
• Unlimited Flexible Time Off: Take the time you need to recharge.
• Paid Parental Leave: 18 weeks for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents.