Manager of Engineering, Docker

• The successful candidate leads first. They are an experienced engineering manager who can inherit two capable teams, earn trust quickly and help each become a high-performing, value-delivering part of the wider Docker organisation
• They are deliberate about where they spend their attention, protect both teams from becoming the second priority, and make portfolio trade-offs visible rather than allowing urgency, proximity or the loudest stakeholder to decide
• They stay close to the technical work without trying to own every technical decision. They can hold a substantive conversation about distributed backend systems, event and data pipelines, build and CI infrastructure, trust boundaries and production operations
• They are active in design and review, useful during incidents and willing to get hands-on where that moves the work forward. The balance still tilts strongly to leadership, coaching, delivery and organisational judgement
• They care about security as a product and engineering property, not only as compliance. They understand how modern attacks exploit identity, secrets, dependencies and build systems, and they can reason about the evidence customers need to trust an artefact or workflow
• They lead through judgement, clarity and unblocking rather than ceremony for its own sake. Above all, they grow the engineers around them and help both teams ship outcomes developers and enterprises can rely on
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 5+ years managing high-performing engineering teams, with meaningful responsibility across more than one team or distinct technical domain
• 8+ years of professional, hands-on software engineering experience in backend, infrastructure, platform or developer tooling
• Experience leading, growing and retaining engineers at or above your own technical seniority, including teams you did not build and difficult performance conversations
• A leader-first operating model, with current enough technical judgement to participate in design and review across unfamiliar systems without needing to be the best engineer in the room
• Experience prioritising across competing roadmaps, operational load and stakeholder commitments, with clear mechanisms for allocating attention and capacity
• Strong backend and distributed-systems judgement, including APIs, event-driven architectures, data stores, cloud-native infrastructure and production operations
• Understanding of CI or build-system internals, containers and artefact workflows, plus a strong interest in software supply-chain security and trust boundaries
• Experience leading teams that operate production infrastructure through on-call, incident response, observability, SLOs and the work required to reduce recurring operational load
• Strong product judgement and evidence of shaping roadmaps with Product rather than only receiving requirements
• Clear written and verbal communication, strong cross-functional influence, customer closeness and comfort leading a remote-first organisation across European and US time zones

Desirable

• We are looking for one Engineering Manager to lead both teams
• Together they sit at the centre of Docker's secure software supply-chain work: one creates trusted build outcomes, while the other turns build, artifact and dependency data into services and experiences used across Scout and Docker Hardened Images
• This is a two-team leadership role with separate roadmaps, production responsibilities and technical domains
• The teams should deliver independently, with explicit contracts and joined-up ownership where their services connect
• You will own the health, delivery and growth of both teams and make the trade-offs that keep them effective as a portfolio
• You will not be expected to be the deepest expert in every language or domain
• You will need enough technical breadth and current engineering judgement to engage credibly in designs, reviews and incidents across both teams, set direction with strong senior engineers, and recognise when the right answer is to create space for their expertise
• Lead Secure Build and SCS Services, owning delivery, team health, growth, performance and operational excellence across both
• Turn two changing roadmaps into a coherent portfolio plan with explicit priorities, capacity and trade-offs, and create leadership coverage so neither team becomes the permanent second priority
• Partner with Product to shape strategy and roadmaps for secure build, Docker Scout, Docker Hardened Images and the services that connect them
• Stay close to the technical work through design and code review, incident response and selective hands-on contribution where it adds leverage
• Ensure each team's technical direction supports product, security, reliability and customer priorities, setting it collaboratively with Staff and senior engineers while leaving clear decision ownership with them
• Own the interfaces between the teams, including trust boundaries, contracts, data quality, versioning, operational ownership and customer-facing failure modes
• Balance new product work with inherited systems and on-call, and invest in reliability improvements driven by recurring operational pain
• Own engineer growth and performance, handle difficult conversations directly, hire and retain strong people and build succession depth within both teams
• Align Product, Design, Security, DHI Content, Registry, Hub, sales, support, commercial and legal partners while shielding the teams from churn
• Lead disciplined use of AI-assisted engineering and communicate decisions, risks and progress clearly across UK and US working hours
• First 30 days
• Build relationships with every engineer and the Product partners for both teams before changing structure, process or roadmap
• Understand Secure Build's product direction, production estate and on-call load, including Docker Build Cloud and Docker Hub Automated Builds
• Understand the SCS Services products, customers, architecture and operational profile, and map the dependencies, trust boundaries and ownership lines between the teams
• First 90 days
• Own a coherent portfolio plan with both teams and Product, including explicit capacity for roadmap, reliability and cross-team work
• Establish a sustainable operating cadence and leadership coverage that prevents either team depending on your constant presence
• Agree ownership and escalation paths for shared services and failures, start one material improvement in each team and make progress and risk visible
• One year Outlook
• Both teams deliver predictably against a portfolio that connects secure build, Scout and Docker Hardened Images outcomes without collapsing their distinct missions
• Secure Build has delivered material trusted-build or secure-CI capability and reduced operational risk in its inherited production systems
• SCS Services has delivered material customer outcomes, while both teams have sustainable on-call, clearer ownership and senior engineers leading broader work