Principal Software Engineer, AI Tools and Security (Seattle or SF Bay Area)

The role

You will lead the technical direction of the MCP Gateway and related services. You will collaborate with Product, Design, and Security to deliver frameworks and APIs for secure AI infrastructure.

What you will do

• Define the technical solution for a new product
• Help shape the product with peers in Product and Design
• Mentor other technical team members
• Be the technical point of contact for the team
• Participate in an on-call rotation including evenings, weekends, and holidays

Required qualifications

• 10+ years of backend engineering experience, including work on production-grade, distributed systems at scale
• Technical leadership across multiple teams or domains
• Expertise in designing and evolving large-scale, cloud-native systems
• Experience building secure, resilient, and high-throughput backend services
• Strong grasp of software engineering fundamentals including CI/CD, testing strategy, source control, and deployment automation
• Proven track record of technical mentorship and cross-functional collaboration
• Deep experience with major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and infrastructure-as-code tooling
• Excellent communication skills
• Ability to operate autonomously in distributed, remote-first teams
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

Nice to have

• Fluency in Go
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and microservices architecture
• Prior experience with OpenAI, Anthropic, or similar LLM APIs, and the MCP specification

Benefits

• Remote-first by design
• Flexibility to manage your schedule
• Generous PTO
• Designated quarterly Whaleness Days
• Designated end-of-year Whaleness break
• Home office support
• Technology stipend equivalent to US$100 net per month
• Annual stipend for conferences, courses, certifications, and continued learning
• 16 weeks of paid parental leave after six months of employment
• Equity for all full-time employees
• Medical, retirement, and paid holidays
• Docker swag

Before you apply

• Docker considers visa sponsorship on a case-by-case basis based on business needs
• Docker may use AI-assisted tools during the recruiting process
• Candidates may be invited to opt in to interview recordings

About the company

Docker is a globally distributed, remote-first team building tools that define how software gets built and delivered. Their products include Docker Desktop, Docker Hub, and Docker Scout.