Principal Software Engineer, Docker Agents

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the long-term technical strategy for Docker’s containerized agent platform, including core primitives, APIs, and extensibility patterns.
• Design and implement systems that use Docker containers as runtimes for AI agents, ensuring isolation, scalability, and portability.
• Maintain and evolve the open-source Docker Agent project, adding capabilities for containerized agent deployment, orchestration, and lifecycle management.
• Build infrastructure for packaging, deploying, and managing agents across local and cloud environments.
• Define evaluation frameworks for agent quality, reliability, production readiness, and runtime deployment effectiveness.
• Establish standards for observability, performance, and operational excellence; lead production decisions and incident learnings.
• Rapidly prototype agent capabilities and deployment patterns from concept through production.
• Engage with the Docker Agent community, review contributions, and grow the ecosystem.
• Lead cross-functional technical discussions and influence architectural decisions across Docker’s AI initiatives.
• Mentor senior engineers, lead design reviews, and provide clear technical direction and coaching.
• Participate in an on-call rotation as needed, including evenings, weekends, and holidays.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years in technical leadership roles at Staff, Principal, or equivalent scope.
• Strong proficiency in Go, or the ability and willingness to ramp up quickly.
• Practical experience with large language models and AI agent development patterns.
• Hands-on experience using AI for software development.
• Ability to design scalable, distributed systems in production environments.
• Deep understanding of Docker, containerization best practices, and container orchestration.
• Experience building and operating platform services with observability, CI/CD, and security foundations.
• Experience operating and evolving highly available production systems with a focus on reliability and performance.
• Exceptional communication skills and the ability to influence across technical and business domains.
• Candidates must currently be located in the UK. The role is remote-first with expected office attendance in London approximately once per month.
• Docker does not offer immigration or visa sponsorship for this role.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with CrewAI, AGNO, ADK, LangChain, LangGraph, or similar AI orchestration frameworks.
• Python experience for AI prototyping and tooling.
• Experience with Kubernetes or other container orchestration platforms.
• Open-source contributions and community engagement.
• Experience with agent evaluation, reliability, and observability techniques.

Compensation and benefits

• Technology stipend equivalent to $100 USD net per month.
• Equity participation.
• Home office setup support.
• 16 weeks of paid parental leave after six months of employment.
• PTO plan.
• Training stipend for conferences, courses, and classes.
• Designated quarterly Whaleness Days and an end-of-year Whaleness break.
• Medical benefits, retirement, and holidays vary by country.
• Remote-first culture with offices in Seattle and Paris.