# Staff Software Engineer, Developer Experience

**Company:** [Docker](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/docker)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** €111k – €276k/yr
**Experience:** 8+ years
**Skills:** Clojure, Go, Kafka, Spanner, Datomic, Distributed Systems, Event-Driven Architecture, APIs, Relational Databases, Cloud-Native Infrastructure, Docker, Observability, Ai-Assisted Engineering
**Posted:** 2026-08-14

> Leads ambiguous, cross-team backend and developer-experience initiatives while remaining hands-on with distributed services, data pipelines and platform evolution. Requires 8+ years of software engineering experience, production-system leadership, strong operational judgment and the ability to work across unfamiliar technologies.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Set technical direction for major backend and developer-experience initiatives across Clojure, Go and adjacent systems.
- Turn ambiguous product or platform problems into clear plans, staged decisions and measurable outcomes.
- Design, build and operate distributed services, event pipelines, databases and APIs with strong security and reliability characteristics.
- Lead cross-team delivery, surface risks early and remove technical or organisational blockers without waiting for formal authority.
- Make pragmatic recommendations about retaining, evolving or replacing existing components, including reducing legacy Datomic dependencies.
- Partner with Product, Design, Security and engineering teams to connect technical investment to developer and business outcomes.
- Improve observability, incident readiness, performance and service ownership.
- Improve engineering leverage through automation, AI-assisted workflows and controls that preserve human accountability.
- Mentor senior engineers, raise the quality of design and code reviews and create reusable patterns.
- Stay hands-on through implementation, debugging and paid on-call rotation.
- Communicate decisions and trade-offs clearly in a remote, async-first environment.

## Requirements
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, with technical leadership on production systems at scale.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Deep experience designing, building and operating production backend or platform systems.
- Strong programming ability in at least one production language and the ability to become effective in unfamiliar languages and codebases.
- Experience with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, APIs, relational or distributed databases and cloud-native infrastructure.
- Track record of leading complex initiatives across team or organisational boundaries.
- Strong technical and product judgement, including explaining constraints, alternatives, customer outcomes and business trade-offs.
- Evidence of influencing without authority and improving the effectiveness of experienced engineers.
- Operational mindset covering observability, resilience, incident response and on-call ownership.
- Critical use of AI-assisted engineering tools while retaining ownership of results.
- Clear written and spoken communication suited to a remote, async-first company.

## Nice-to-haves
- Production experience with Go, Clojure or both.
- Experience with Spanner, Datomic, Kafka or other distributed data and streaming platforms.
- Experience with build systems, containers, artefact workflows or developer tooling.
- Experience evolving a platform, database or language strategy without disrupting product delivery.
- Experience building security or software supply-chain products.

## Compensation & Benefits
- EU compensation: €110,500–€181,500 plus equity.
- United States compensation: $170,350–$275,550 plus equity.
- Freedom and flexibility with remote-first work.
- Quarterly Whaleness Days and an end-of-year Whaleness break.
- Home office setup support.
- 16 weeks of paid parental leave after six months of employment.
- Technology stipend equivalent to $100 USD net per month.
- PTO plan, training stipend, equity, medical benefits, retirement and holidays varying by country.
- Docker swag.
- Sponsorship considered case by case based on business needs.

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