Senior Software Engineer, Docker

• The successful candidate must have a strong professional backend and/or platform engineering experience, and demonstrated professional experience and proficiency in Go
• 6+ years of experience building backend software, with recent demonstrated hands-on Go (Golang) proficiency. We are looking for strong backend and platform engineering experience for this role
• Demonstrated professional, hands-on experience with Go (Golang) in a production environment
• Experience designing and building modular systems used across multiple teams
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work through ambiguity and cross-cutting challenges
• Experience working with observability, telemetry, or system health metrics
• Demonstrated ownership of projects from design through delivery
• Excellent communication skills, including technical documentation and cross-team collaboration
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

Desirable

• In this role, you will design and build backend and platform systems that power Docker Desktop
• You’ll focus on shared components, system reliability, telemetry, and architectural improvements that support all Desktop teams
• You'll be thinking in terms of modular systems, understand how their work impacts other teams, and end customers too
• Our work on lifecycle ( installers, updater, startup) is directly user-facing, so we are looking to hire someone who is comfortable owning cross-cutting problems from design through delivery
• Design, develop, and maintain core platform systems that support the Docker Desktop lifecycle
• Build and evolve shared components such as settings, feature flags, and internal platform services
• Improve system reliability, performance, and observability through telemetry and diagnostics
• Collaborate with teams to ensure platform capabilities support feature development
• Contribute to architectural discussions and long-term technical direction of the Desktop platform
• Write high-quality Go code with strong test coverage and support engineering best practices
• Drive initiatives end to end, from problem definition through implementation and iteration
• This role may require participation in an on-call rotation to provide support outside of standard business hours, including evenings, weekends, and holidays, as needed
• First 30 Days
• Meet your team, your onboarding buddy, and key collaborators across Docker Desktop
• Set up your development environment and become familiar with the Desktop Platform architecture, lifecycle systems, and key internal components
• Contribute your first small changes—bug fixes, reliability improvements, or performance tweaks
• Participate in design discussions and pair programming to gain exposure to our tooling and workflows
• First 90 Days
• Drive or co-drive a larger feature, from design to development
• Present findings, technical proposals, or insights to the team through proposal reviews or internal demos
• Influence roadmap priorities based on what you’ve learned about the system’s strengths, gaps, and opportunities
• One Year Outlook (First Year)
• Deliver measurable impact with the team
• Lead architectural or cross-cutting platform initiatives that improve development velocity or user experience
• Help shape long-term technical direction with well-considered proposals and influence cross-team engineering practices
• Become a go-to engineer for complex issues and a trusted partner to teams building on top of the platform