Senior Software Engineer (Guarded Containers)

Open Source has taken over the world of software development; however, the largest trade-off still persists: security. Companies spend an enormous amount of time and resources patching and fortifying open source software in order to ship with confidence & compliance. 

Founded by the industry's leading experts on open source software, security and cloud native development, Chainguard has built the largest library of open source software that is secure by default. Customers including Snowflake, Canva, and HPE rely on Chainguard to build securely with open source software across the organization.

Chainguard is the safe source for open source.

About Us

We live and breathe our company values:

We are customer obsessed - Our true advantage is the strength of our relationships with customers through collaboration, empathy, and responsiveness.  We establish trust as we educate, advocate, and listen to their needs.  Our focus is on delivering solutions to our customers that create value and make their lives better. 

We have a bias for intentional action - We’re a start-up and we need to move fast. However we need to move fast through intentional action to make sure we’re able to deliver quickly and efficiently on what is most impactful to our collective success.  We prioritize, plan, try things, and fail fast.  We think about how what we do impacts other teams and communicate our progress - owning the whole solution from start to finish. If we move fast enough, we can make two or three mistakes, learn, and correct them before competitors even make their first decision.

We don’t take ourselves too seriously (but we do serious work) - Though we are solving an important problem which takes focus and a degree of seriousness, we don’t take ourselves too seriously while we do.  We laugh, have fun, embrace uniqueness, and enjoy the journey. Together.

We trust each other and assume good intentions - We hire great team members and trust them to do their work. We’re transparent with data, news, and decisions - positive or negative - to empower team members to make well informed decisions. Showing up for each other fully means we celebrate each other’s accomplishments as well as give compassionate direct feedback when needed.  We always default to assuming good intentions.

Who we are

The role, in a nutshell:

The successful candidate will be part of our Guarded Containers team, whose mission is to develop new features for our customers, build and improve tooling and infrastructure, and maintain product quality standards for our core product – Chainguard Images. You'll collaborate closely with team members, guide technical decisions, and promote a culture of excellence.

What you’ll do:

Collaborate with customers and cross-functional teams to design innovative services and features that enhance the core product, making it more compelling and valuableDevelop robust tooling and infrastructure to continue to improve our image build system as it scales

• Define product quality standards and write tools to enforce them
• Collaborate with Engineering, Product Management, and executive leaders to innovate, plan, and drive technical goals

What we're looking for:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience
• 5+ years of experience in software development, data structures, algorithms, compilers, Makefiles, and toolchains
• Expertise with containers, container registries, Docker, Kubernetes and its greater ecosystem
• Experience with Terraform or other Infrastructure as Code, and proficiency in creating modules and organizing resources logically for reuse.
• Competence in scripting and automation, with languages such as Python, Go, Bash, or similar.
• Strong communication skills, proficiency in English, ability to work autonomously, take initiative, and seek help proactively when necessary.

Nice to haves

• Author and/or contributor to open-source projects.

Explore Our Work

Dive into the practical side of what we do at Chainguard. These resources provide a hands-on look at our processes and offer an opportunity for in-depth understanding of our product offerings and the technology behind them.

• Chainguard Academy 
• https://www.chainguard.dev

A few of the benefits we offer (for our full time employees):

• Equity/stock options
• Unlimited PTO
• Remote work with flexible coworking and team meetup opportunities
• Home office and internet stipend
• 100% health/dental/vision insurance coverage for you and your family
• Monthly Wellness budget

If your experience is close but doesn’t fulfill all requirements, please apply. Chainguard is on a mission to build the best team. To achieve our goal, we are focused on hiring “Guardians'' with unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences.

Chainguard is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

For US based roles - Chainguard participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with employee Form I-9 Information to confirm authorization to work in the U.S. Chainguard, Inc. only uses E-Verify once a candidate has accepted a job offer and completed the Form I-9. If E-Verify cannot confirm that an employee is authorized to work, Chainguard, Inc. will give the employee written instructions and an opportunity to contact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Social Security Administration (SSA) so the employee can begin to resolve the issue before any adverse employment action is taken. For more information about your right to work, please see the Notice of Right to Work.

By submitting your application, you acknowledge that Chainguard will process your personal data in accordance with Chainguard’s Privacy Policy.