Staff Software Engineer, Docker
Docker Agents
More information about location
App development platform
Open for applications
App development platform
1001+ employees
Open for applications
More information about location
1001+ employees
Company mission
To simplify the lives of developers building world-changing apps.
Role
Who you are
- Go Expertise: Strong, demonstrated, professional proficiency in Go (this is absolutely required) - Docker's primary language for backend systems
- AI/ML Knowledge: Practical experience with large language models (LLMs) and agent development
- System Architecture: Proven ability to design scalable, distributed systems
- Container Technology: Deep understanding of Docker, containerization best practices, and container orchestration
- RAG Systems: Experience building Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems (secondary focus)
- Rapid Iteration: Demonstrated ability to prototype quickly and iterate based on feedback
- AI Frameworks: Experience with CrewAI, AGNO, ADK, LangChain/LangGraph or similar AI orchestration frameworks (peferred)
- Python Proficiency: Experience with Python for AI prototyping and tooling (prefered)
- Experience with Kubernetes or container orchestration platforms (preferred)
- Open source contributions and community engagement (preferred)
- Experience with agent evaluation, reliability, and observability techniques (preferred)
- 8+ years of directly applicable experience
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
What the job involves
- You’ll be working on Docker Agent, our open-source project and expanding on it to enable developers to build, deploy, and scale intelligent agents using Docker’s container technology
- This is a greenfield opportunity to shape how developers leverage containers for AI agents at massive scale
- You'll work alongside a team of seasoned engineers, collaborating with our sister teams working on Ask Gordon and Docker's broader AI platform. This is a unique opportunity to combine cutting-edge AI techniques with container technology to solve real-world developer problems
- As a Staff Engineer, you will partner with the engineering leadership to help set technical direction and serve as a guide and mentor as the team grows and matures
- Build Containerized Agent Systems: Design and implement systems that leverage Docker containers as the ideal runtime for AI agents, ensuring isolation, scalability, and portability
- Expand cagent: Maintain and evolve the open-source cagent project, adding new capabilities for containerized agent deployment and orchestration
- Agent Runtime Development: Build robust infrastructure for packaging, deploying, and managing agents in containers
- RAG Integration: Enhance agent capabilities with Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems to provide contextual knowledge and domain expertise (secondary focus)
- Evaluation & Testing: Design robust evaluation frameworks to measure agent performance, reliability, and containerized deployment effectiveness
- Rapid Prototyping: Iterate quickly on new agent capabilities and deployment patterns, moving from concept to production efficiently
- Open Source Community: Engage with the cagent community, review contributions, and help grow the ecosystem
- Cross-functional Collaboration: Work closely with product managers, designers, and engineers across Docker's AI teams to integrate containerized agent capabilities into Docker's developer experience
- On-Call Rotation: Take part in on-call rotation for your team; respond to incidents, debug production issues, and drive continuous improvement of system reliability
- First 30 days:
- Integrate into our dynamic AI engineering team building containerized agent infrastructure
- Deep dive into cagent's architecture and our containerized agent deployment roadmap
- Contribute your first enhancements to cagent with the help of your team
- Understand our technical stack and begin collaborating with sister AI teams
- First 90 days:
- Lead significant features or improvements to cagent and our containerized agent platform
- Enhance agent deployment capabilities and container-based orchestration patterns
- Collaborate with the open-source community on cagent development
- Help other new team members onboard
- Regularly interact with internal stakeholders and analyze user feedback
- One Year Outlook:
- Drive major architectural decisions for our containerized agent platform that will impact millions of Docker users
- Continue to help grow the team and develop efficient agent development processes
- Contribute to evaluation frameworks and performance optimization across our agent systems
- Lead initiatives to expand containerized agent capabilities for enterprise use cases
- Grow your skills in enterprise-grade containerized AI system architecture and deployment
- Shape the future direction of cagent and Docker's agent ecosystem
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.
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