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# Staff Software Engineer, Docker AI Substrate (Seattle or Palo Alto)

- **Company:** Docker
- **Location:** Seattle, WA, United States (Remote available)
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Salary:** $170,350.0 - $275,550.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Desktop Computing, Programming Tools, Distributed Systems, Fault Tolerance, Cloud Services, Software Engineering, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Backend, Build Management, Kubernetes, Information Technology, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Docker
- **Published:** October 8, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.careerbuilder.com/job-details/staff-software-engineer-docker-ai-substrate-seattle-or-palo-alto-seattle-wa--0f9c43d8-41a9-4ef1-a85f-24e8fd7101f5

## About the Role

Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Docker, Docker, Desktop PC, Programming Tools, Team Building, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Agents, Software Development, Software Engineering, * You have built and operated a cloud control and management plane. Software that provisions, upgrades, and watches infrastructure for many tenants or environments, in production, with a pager. Experience at a cloud provider, a managed-service vendor, or a platform team that stamps out environments.

 * Kubernetes beyond deployment. You have written controllers or operators, understand reconciliation and CRDs, and know why declarative beats imperative at fleet scale.
 * Deep in at least one major cloud. Hands-on with compute, networking, identity, and managed services, and able to pick up a second cloud fast.
 * Production ownership. On-call, incident response, SLOs, post-mortems. You run what you build.
 * Distributed systems design. Fault tolerance, consistency, observability, idempotent reconciliation.
 * Go. Professional proficiency. Docker's backend and all of this team's code is Go.
 * 10+ years of professional software engineering in infrastructure, platform, or cloud services, with the judgment to set direction for others.

Strongly preferred

 * Kubernetes resource orchestration and cloud controllers, such as KRO.
 * Release engineering and software supply chain: OCI registries, digests, license compliance.
 * Private connectivity between cloud accounts: PrivateLink, VPC peering, service endpoints, egress policy.
 * OpenTelemetry pipelines with multiple destinations.
 * Building managed services.
 * Firecracker, microVMs, or other isolated execution environments for untrusted code.
 * Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Visa sponsorship: Docker considers visa sponsorship on a case-by-case basis based on business needs.

## Description

As agents take on bigger jobs, the infrastructure around them matters more. Docker's answer is to give every agent a strong boundary, make its environment and authority reproducible, and let the work run where it makes sense, from a developer's laptop to the cloud. The Docker AI Substrate team brings that foundation to the enterprise: the largest companies in the world, running agents at scale, with the security, reliability, and control they expect from any critical system. We are a small, senior team at the start of that work. As a Staff Software Engineer here, you will shape the architecture, build the core systems, and run what you build., * Design and build the systems that deploy, release, and operate Docker's agentic platform for enterprise customers, in Go and on Kubernetes.

 * Make the platform run consistently across cloud providers and environments, with the security, identity, and network boundaries enterprises require.
 * Own the release and supply chain path so every deployment is reproducible, verifiable, and trusted.
 * Run what you build: production ownership, on-call, SLOs, incident response, and the operational tooling that keeps it boring.
 * Set technical direction with the team's architect and engineering leadership, and work with partner teams across runtime, developer experience, identity, and observability.
 * Raise the bar through design review, testing discipline, and mentorship as the team grows.