Principal Software Engineer, Developer Tools (US West Coast)

Docker3 days ago

Location

United States

Workplace

Remote

Type

Full Time

Salary

USD 198,000 – 319,000

Level

Principal

Role

Principal Software Engineer

Posted

Jun 26, 2026

Full TimeRemotePrincipal

The role

Summary

Docker seeks a Principal Software Engineer to define the technical vision and architecture for its internal Developer Tools team. This role spans platform engineering, CI/CD systems, and AI-powered tooling, with responsibility for establishing Docker's software development lifecycle standards and golden path methodologies. You'll architect scalable, self-service infrastructure enabling teams across Docker to build, deploy, and operate services with minimal friction while mentoring senior engineers and driving technical excellence across the organization.

What you'll do

Define Technical Vision and Architecture: Establish the long-term technical vision and architecture for Docker's developer tooling platform spanning platform engineering, CI/CD systems, build infrastructure, and AI-powered tools. Lead the authoring of SDLC tenets in partnership with other principal engineers, Security, and Infrastructure teams, then build the mechanisms those tenets bind to including design gates, code review gates, pipeline standards, and visibility dashboards.

Platform Engineering and Self-Service Infrastructure: Architect and build Docker's internal developer platform that empowers teams across the organization to scaffold, prototype, deploy, and operate their own services and tools with minimal friction. Design the self-service substrate enabling rapid development cycles while maintaining security, reliability, and cost management standards across all workloads.

CI/CD and Build Systems Strategy: Define Docker's technical approach to continuous integration, delivery, and build infrastructure. Establish architectural standards for pipeline tooling, GitOps deployment patterns, build substrate selection, and release engineering practices. Design and implement CI/CD infrastructure that supports Docker's SDLC tenets and scales to support hundreds of engineers.

Establish Technical Standards and Best Practices: Define and enforce architectural patterns, technical standards, and best practices across the entire developer tooling stack. Establish reliability, security, and performance standards including SLOs, monitoring, incident response procedures, and cost management frameworks. Create architectural decision records and guides enabling teams to build confidently on the platform.

AI and Emerging Technology Integration: Evaluate emerging technologies across developer tooling, platform engineering, AI/LLM frameworks, and agent orchestration to inform Docker's technical strategy. Drive the integration of AI agents into the software development lifecycle, including Model Context Protocol (MCP) standards and autonomous workflow evaluation. Define technical approaches for safely sandboxing and orchestrating AI agents within developer environments.

Golden Path Definition and Enforcement: Define and enforce Docker's golden path—the concrete, left-to-right walkthrough of how the organization builds software. Identify gaps where tooling closes operational friction versus where human process and decision-making remains essential. Continuously evolve the golden path as technologies and methodologies advance, particularly as AI agents redefine development workflows.

Developer Productivity Measurement and Analytics: Drive technical standards for measuring developer tool effectiveness through adoption metrics, productivity gains, pipeline performance analysis, and developer satisfaction surveys. Define success metrics and instrumentation strategy for tracking the business impact of developer tooling investments. Establish baselines and track improvements in design quality, commit frequency, PR velocity, deployment reliability, and incident response times.

Cross-Functional Technical Leadership: Partner with Senior Manager and product leadership to align technical architecture with business objectives and productization opportunities. Lead cross-functional technical discussions influencing company-wide developer tooling architecture. Collaborate with Infrastructure, Security, Agentic Platform, and Supply Chain Security teams to establish shared technical standards and integration patterns. Serve as the primary technical contact and thought leader for developer tooling across Docker's engineering organization.

Mentorship and Team Development: Mentor senior and staff engineers on platform engineering principles, CI/CD design patterns, systems architecture, and AI/LLM integration techniques. Lead design reviews and technical decision-making across all developer tooling initiatives. Foster a culture of technical excellence, experimentation, and rapid prototyping within the Developer Tools team while elevating the entire engineering organization's technical capabilities.

Internal-to-Product Productization Strategy: Define and execute the technical approach for productizing successful internal developer tools into customer-facing offerings. Guide the transition from internal tooling to scalable, production-hardened commercial products. Ensure architectural decisions support both internal developer experience and external customer requirements including security, compliance, and multi-tenant isolation.

What we look for

Technical

CI/CD and Build Systems ExpertiseDeep expertise architecting and operating CI/CD systems, build infrastructure, and GitOps deployment patterns at scale. Proven experience designing production pipeline tooling, defining release engineering processes, and establishing build substrate standards.

Platform Engineering and Developer ToolsProven track record architecting and operating developer-facing platforms, internal tools, and developer productivity systems at scale. Experience designing self-service platforms, developer portals, or golden path tooling that enable teams to move faster without sacrificing quality or security.

Cloud-Native Infrastructure and KubernetesProduction experience with cloud-native infrastructure including Kubernetes orchestration, container networking, and distributed systems design. Hands-on knowledge of managing scalable infrastructure supporting hundreds or thousands of concurrent users and workloads.

Observability and Monitoring SystemsDeep technical knowledge of observability infrastructure including Prometheus for metrics collection, Grafana for visualization, and Loki for log aggregation. Experience establishing SLOs, designing monitoring strategies, and building incident response frameworks for production systems.

AI/ML Technologies and LLM IntegrationWorking knowledge of AI/ML technologies and hands-on experience with LLM APIs or AI agent development frameworks. Familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP) or similar AI agent integration standards. Understanding of safely deploying autonomous agents in secure, sandboxed environments.

Programming Languages and Software FundamentalsProficiency in Go (preferred), Rust, Java, or Python with strong software engineering fundamentals including system design, concurrency patterns, and performance optimization. Ability to architect solutions that balance performance, maintainability, and developer experience.

Infrastructure-as-Code and Deployment ToolingHands-on experience with infrastructure-as-code frameworks including Terraform and Pulumi. Knowledge of deployment automation, configuration management, and managing infrastructure across multiple cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure).

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related FieldBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field. Equivalent practical experience demonstrating deep systems thinking and software architecture expertise is equally valued.

Experience

Senior-Level Engineering LeadershipMinimum 10 years of software engineering experience with at least 3+ years in Staff or Principal Engineer roles. Track record of making high-impact architectural decisions and leading engineering initiatives that shaped organizational technical direction.

Developer Platform Architecture at ScaleProven experience architecting and operating developer productivity systems serving hundreds of engineers. Demonstrated success designing platforms that balance self-service flexibility with organizational standards, security requirements, and cost management.

Technical Mentorship and LeadershipEstablished track record of technical mentorship and elevating engineering team capabilities. Experience leading design reviews, establishing technical standards, and building consensus across organizations on architectural decisions. Demonstrated ability to influence and align teams through technical excellence and clear communication.

Technical Decision Making Under AmbiguityExperience navigating rapidly evolving technical landscapes and making pragmatic build-versus-buy decisions. Demonstrated ownership mentality with bias for action and iterative delivery in fast-moving, ambiguous environments where requirements evolve alongside emerging technologies.

Open Source and Community ContributionsPreferred background with contributions to open source developer tooling, platform engineering, or observability projects. Evidence of thought leadership and influence within the broader engineering community.

Skills

Required skills

Systems Architecture and DesignExpert-level ability to design highly available, scalable systems that serve hundreds or thousands of engineers. Strong mental models for distributed systems, concurrency patterns, and trade-offs between consistency, availability, and partition tolerance.

Platform Mindset and Developer ExperienceExceptional product and platform mindset considering developer experience, business outcomes, and technical/security trade-offs. Ability to think in platforms and golden paths, designing for adoption rather than mandate. Understanding that platform success requires earning trust through data before expanding scope.

Build-Versus-Buy Decision MakingExceptional judgment on when to build custom solutions versus integrate existing tools. Ability to evaluate architectural trade-offs, community maturity, vendor lock-in risks, and total cost of ownership to make pragmatic decisions that balance organizational needs with execution velocity.

Technical Communication and InfluenceStrong communication skills with demonstrated ability to influence both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Proven capability to present architectural proposals, gain alignment across organizations, and drive consensus on complex technical decisions. Experience communicating trade-offs and rationale to executive leadership.

Remote-First Distributed TeamworkComfortable working autonomously in distributed, remote-first teams across multiple time zones. Demonstrated success communicating asynchronously, building relationships across geographies, and maintaining productivity without colocation.

Iterative Delivery and Bias for ActionOwnership mentality with bias for action and demonstrated ability to ship iteratively while maintaining high quality bars. Experience balancing shipping quickly to learn with establishing architectural foundations that support long-term growth. Comfort with intentional technical debt decisions and deliberate trade-offs.

Nice to have

DevOps and Site Reliability EngineeringBackground in DevOps, SRE, or infrastructure-focused platform engineering domains. Understanding of operational excellence principles, incident response, and building systems that prioritize reliability and observability from first principles.

Open Source ContributionsContributions to open source developer tooling, platform engineering, or observability projects. Demonstrated thought leadership and community recognition within the broader software engineering community.

Productization ExperienceTrack record of successfully productizing internal platforms and tools into commercial, customer-facing offerings. Experience navigating the transition from internal-focused optimization to customer-ready products with support, documentation, and multi-tenant architecture considerations.

Security and Compliance ExpertiseDeep knowledge of security, compliance, and operational best practices for production systems. Understanding of threat modeling, secure design patterns, access control, and compliance requirements relevant to developer infrastructure serving as critical organizational bottlenecks.