Staff Software Engineer (Customer Platform)

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)
• ▹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, helping the team prioritize tradeoffs and ship iteratively

Requirements

• ▹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; 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: 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

Nice to have

• ▹Familiarity with cloud-native environments (Kubernetes, cloud provider APIs)
• ▹Experience with entitlements, billing systems, or platform infrastructure
• ▹Prior exposure to building or extending AI-powered product features

Soft skills

What we offer

• ▹Base salary range: $205,000–$231,000 USD
• ▹Flexible & remote-first culture, team meetup opportunities, bi-annual destination summits, monthly stipend for coworking spaces, phone and internet costs
• ▹Stock options upon hire and promotion, plus participation in secondary offerings

About the company

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source, delivering hardened, secure, production-ready builds relied on by engineers and AI agents. Its customers include Fortune 500 companies such as Anduril, Canva, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, OpenAI, Snap Inc. and Snowflake, and it is backed by investors including Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Sequoia Capital.