Senior Principal Engineer, Docker and Ecosystem

📋 Job Overview

Docker is seeking a Senior Principal Engineer to serve as the technical visionary and architect for how software gets built, verified, and trusted. This role sits in Docker and Ecosystems, the group that owns Docker’s most well known products and our emerging content and SDLC business. You will own the technical strategy for secure software delivery across all of it, defining what verifiable, tamper-resistant software delivery looks like at Docker's scale, then driving the architecture that makes it real for every developer and every enterprise customer using our products.

🏢 About Docker

Docker has been one of the most loved brands in developer tooling, trusted by more than 20 million monthly users and over 20 billion container image pulls. From solo founders to the world's largest companies, developers rely on Docker to build, share, and run their applications across our suite of products including Docker Desktop, Docker Hub, and Docker Scout. We are a globally distributed, remote-first team building the tools that define how software gets built and delivered. As AI agents redefine software development, Docker is at the center of that shift, providing the sandboxed environments, verified images, and secure infrastructure that make autonomous workflows trustworthy by default.

🎯 The Role

Docker is seeking a Senior Principal Engineer to serve as the technical visionary and architect for how software gets built, verified, and trusted. Every day, millions of developers pull images, install dependencies, and ship builds to production. Each of those steps is a place where something can go wrong, or be made to go wrong. Compromised base images, malicious packages, tampered build steps, unsigned artifacts moving through pipelines nobody is watching. The industry calls this the software supply chain, and it has become one of the most consequential unsolved problems in software engineering.

✅ Key Responsibilities

• Lead multi-year technical vision for build security and supply chain across Docker Desktop, Hub, Hardened Images, Verified Publishing, and monetization platforms.
• Define and sequence \"trusted by default\" architecture for 20M developers.
• Partner with the SVP of Engineering to convert commercial strategy into multi-year technical roadmaps.
• Establish company-wide architectural principles and security standards.
• Identify high-leverage platform investments that enhance security across all Docker products.
• Proactively position architecture ahead of evolving supply chain threats and regulatory demands.
• Architect systems to detect and prevent build-process threats like compromised dependencies, malicious steps, tampered artifacts, and untrusted images.
• Design provenance and attestation infrastructure ensuring Docker artifacts carry verifiable build history.
• Define artifact signing, verification, and policy enforcement across local workflows and CI/CD pipelines.
• Architect SBOM generation, dependency analysis, and vulnerability intelligence for complete software visibility.
• Align with and help shape emerging supply chain security standards.
• Ensure security controls remain fast and unobtrusive so developers keep them enabled.
• Architect how Docker's security capabilities integrate across the full software development lifecycle, from local development through CI/CD to production deployment
• Design the interfaces and contracts that let Docker's tooling embed into the pipelines, registries, and platforms customers already run, rather than asking them to rebuild around us
• Define the developer experience for security tooling, where the secure path is the fast path and the default path
• Architect policy and enforcement models that satisfy enterprise security and compliance requirements without fragmenting the developer workflow
• Drive convergence of security capabilities across Docker products, replacing product-specific implementations with shared platform primitives
• Work with leaders across engineering to drive strategy and execution
• Mentor and develop Staff and Principal engineers, raising the technical bar across the organization
• Represent Docker's security architecture externally through blog posts, conference talks, standards bodies, and technical community engagement
• Participate in executive-level discussions, providing architectural perspective on business decisions
• Take part in on-call rotation for your team, respond to incidents, debug production issues, and drive continuous improvement of system reliability

📌 Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience specializing in build security, software supply chain security, or SDLC tooling
• Deep understanding of build process threat models across dependencies, environments, artifacts, and pipelines, along with effective mitigations
• Architectural experience in artifact signing, attestations, SBOMs, dependency security, CI/CD security, base image trust, or vulnerability intelligence
• Practical knowledge of supply chain security frameworks and standards
• Expertise in API design, service architecture, and scalable system integration
• Proven record delivering large-scale distributed systems for millions of users and enterprise customers
• Experience with major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and modern infrastructure
• Bachelor's degree in CS, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience

⭐ Desirable Experience

• Proven track record creating strategic technical plans that enable revenue, expansion, or enterprise deals
• Experience converting business strategy into technical roadmaps that drive product development and market success
• Strong background in enterprise security architecture and compliance frameworks
• Experience with container security, image scanning, and runtime protection technologies
• Track record of publishing technical content, contributing to open-source projects, or speaking at industry conferences
• Understanding of AI/ML security implications and secure development practices

🎁 Benefits

Competitive salary, equity, and benefits package. Docker offers comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance, generous PTO, professional development funds, and a flexible work environment.

🛂 Visa & Eligibility

U.S. work authorization required.