Staff Software Engineer, Docker
AI Gateway
$200.4-275.6k
+ Equity
More information about location
App development platform
Open for applications
App development platform
501-1000 employees
Open for applications
$200.4-275.6k
+ Equity
More information about location
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To increase the time developers spend on innovation, and decrease the time they spend on everything else.
Role
Who you are
- 8+ years of backend engineering experience with production-grade systems
- Deep knowledge of distributed and highly scalable systems, cloud-native infrastructure, and API design
- Experience building secure, high-throughput services (e.g., gateways, proxies, load balancers, policy engines)
- Fluency in Go, and/or Rust (both preferred)
- Familiarity with AI/ML platforms or model serving infrastructure
- A strong product mindset—you're excited about building developer-facing tools
- Ownership mentality with a bias for shipping, learning, and iterating
Desirable
- Prior experience with OpenAI, Anthropic, or similar LLM APIs
- Familiarity with RAG architectures, vector databases, or agent frameworks (e.g., LangChain, AutoGPT, CrewAI)
- Experience with policy engines (e.g., OPA), observability frameworks (e.g., OpenTelemetry), or API gateways
- Understanding of OAuth2.1, secret management, and cloud IAM systems
- Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and microservices architecture
What the job involves
- Design and implement core systems powering the AI Gateway, including the model router, MCP gateway, and control plane
- Build infrastructure that supports dynamic model selection, auto-failover, cost-based routing, and policy enforcement
- Own critical capabilities such as secure credential storage, session summarization, caching, and rate limiting
- Develop APIs for developers building with OpenAI-compatible interfaces and the Model Context Protocol
- Build the underlying infrastructure to support evaluation, telemetry, replay, and backtesting for agents and LLM workflows
- Lead architectural decisions and mentor engineers as the team scales
- Collaborate with product and design to create delightful experiences in our control plane UI
- Contribute to roadmap planning, technical strategy, and cross-functional alignment
- Key Problems You’ll Help Solve:
- Build a unified abstraction layer across diverse model and tool providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, AWS Bedrock)
- Implement secure and scalable identity and credential vaulting for tool and model access
- Create infrastructure to support real-time and historical analytics of AI agent behavior
- Ensure policy enforcement and logging works end-to-end—from prompt to tool to response
- Develop seamless developer experiences through intuitive APIs and first-class observability
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 recent 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 is cited to fund hiring new talent, ramping up its business, and continuing to develop and refine its product. It's also embarked on a series of acquisitions to
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
47% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 10 rounds)
Mar 2022
$105m
SERIES C
Mar 2021
$23m
SERIES B
Total funding: $497.9m
Company benefits
- 100% company paid medical premiums for employees and dependents
- Flexible Time Off Policy
- “Whaleness” Days — At least 1 company wide day off per month
- Employer Paid Holidays
- Generous Maternity and Parental Leave
- 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
- Virtual Coffee with Co-Workers
Company HQ
China Basin, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Scott Johnston
(CEO, not founder)Has been COO and CPO with Docker prior to CEO role. Before that was VP, Marketing & Product at Puppet and a Venture Partner at Alloy Ventures.
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