Senior Software Engineer, Docker
Sandboxes
$160.9-260.7k
Offers equity
London or East Coast Preferred
App development platform
Be an early applicant
App development platform
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$160.9-260.7k
Offers equity
London or East Coast Preferred
1001+ employees
Company mission
To simplify the lives of developers building world-changing apps.
Role
Who you are
- The successful candidate is a technical, product-minded engineer with deep experience building secure, isolated runtime environments (sandboxes, containers, or VMs) and a track record of shipping and owning that kind of infrastructure in production at scale
- They think naturally about isolation and security boundaries, understand the tradeoffs involved in running untrusted or semi-trusted workloads safely, and can reason confidently about a system that spans multiple surface areas
- They can drive clarity and consensus on hard, ambiguous problems that cross team and component boundaries, raise the bar for engineering quality wherever they work, thrive in a remote-first environment, communicate clearly across time zones, work with our users, while bringing curiosity and craftsmanship to hard problems
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, with demonstrated technical leadership on production systems at scale
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
- Experience building developer tools, desktop applications, or runtime infrastructure used directly by developers
- Familiarity with the agentic software development ecosystem: how coding agents work and how tools like Claude Code, Codex, or similar agents interact with their environment
- Ability to reason about isolation and security boundaries: what a sandbox should and shouldn't expose, and how to make safe defaults obvious to users
- Experience driving architecture and technical strategy across multiple engineers or teams
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
- Comfortable working with a high degree of autonomy in a remote-first environment
What the job involves
- The Docker Sandboxes team is building the runtime that lets AI coding agents run safely on a developer's machine: disposable, isolated microVM sandboxes that each get their own Docker daemon, filesystem, and network
- This is the core of Docker's sbx product: developers can give an agent the autonomy it needs to get real work done without it ever touching the host, and tear the whole environment down when it's finished
- Please note: this role is currently prioritizing candidates currently located in the Eastern time zone (US or Canada), or in the EU
- Design, develop, and lead improvements to the sandboxes product across agent integration, tool permissions, and developer-facing workflows
- Investigate and resolve correctness, performance, and stability issues in the agent integration layer across macOS, Windows, and Linux
- Drive the reliability and performance of sandbox creation, session management, and teardown for AI agent workloads
- Collaborate with peers, Product, and adjacent teams to evolve the architecture as requirements grow
- Mentor engineers on the team and set the bar in design reviews and code reviews
- Engage with the open source and agentic development community around sandboxing, MCP, and related ecosystems
- Participate in on-call rotations and respond to critical stability issues affecting users
- Document your work clearly and share knowledge with the rest of the team
Application process
- First 30 Days
- Build an understanding of our codebase
- Meet the people on your team and those adjacent to it
- Build an understanding of the products we are shipping and our near-term technical priorities
- Deliver small fixes or improvements
- First 90 Days
- Lead the design and development of a significant improvement or feature of the local sandboxes stack
- Engage with our open source project and the relevant upstream communities
- Shape the team's technical direction, and drive architecture discussions
- One Year Outlook (First Year)
- Deliver measurable improvements to the correctness and performance of sandboxes
- Become a recognized technical owner of key parts of the codebase and a go-to technical leader for the local runtime
- Help us define the longer-term technical strategy for the filesystem layer in a way that fits with Product and Business goals, and rally the team behind it
Salary benchmarks
Our take
Docker supplies a hub and desktop solution to simplify the workflow of app development teams. Originally known for popularising the idea of containerising software, it saw itself outpaced by Kubernetes. However, the company has identified a problem with the growing complexity of containerisation, with some apps consisting of dozens or even hundreds of containers - which is what it now addresses.
Docker has had a difficult time in the past, with 2019 seeing it sell off its enterprise business, reduce its workforce by hundreds, and change its leadership team. As a well known brand and ecosystem for containerisation, however, it aims to lure developers back to its product as well as to take advantage of the growing global demand for app development.
Returning to focus on developers rather than large companies was certainly a gamble, but one that seems to have paid off. The company has returned to profitability and raised Series C funding in 2022, which has been used to hire new talent, ramping up its business, and continuing to develop and refine its product. On top of this bounce back to success, it's also embarked on a series of acquisitions to bolster its business.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
47% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 13 rounds)
Mar 2022
$105m
SERIES C
Mar 2021
$23m
SERIES B
Total funding: $526m
Company benefits
- 100% company paid medical premiums for employees and dependents
- Flexible Time Off Policy
- Employer Paid Holidays
- Generous Parental Leave (after 6 months of employment)
- Home Office Set Up Budget
- Monthly Technology Stipend
- Training Allowances
- Life and Disability Insurance
- Retirement Plans
- Virtual and In-Person Social Events
- Docker Swag
- Quarterly Hackathons
Company HQ
China Basin, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Don Johnson
(CEO)Prior to joining Docker in 2025, Don spent nearly 9 years at Oracle in various Engineering/VP roles. Before that, they spent over 7 years at Amazon as a Software Development Engineer and Principal Engineer.
Share this job
View 42 more jobs at Docker