SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Salary: USD 170,350 - 275,550 / annual
Docker is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the technical direction of Docker AI Gateway, a control plane that simplifies taking AI agents from prototype to production. The Gateway provides model and tool routing with built-in security, an OpenAI-compatible interface, unified observability, and policy enforcement.
In this role, you will:
- Set technical direction for core systems including the model router, MCP gateway, and control plane, ensuring architectural decisions scale as usage grows 10x
- Proactively identify infrastructure, process, and tooling gaps before they become blockers and drive solutions from conception to production
- Own high-ambiguity problems including dynamic model selection, auto-failover, cost-based routing, and end-to-end policy enforcement
- Become the go-to expert for secure credential storage, session summarization, caching, and rate limiting
- Build infrastructure for evaluating, replaying, and backtesting agent and LLM behavior
- Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, raising the technical bar through code reviews, design leadership, and example
- Partner with product, design, and leadership to shape the control plane UI and product direction
- Define unified abstraction layers across diverse model providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, AWS Bedrock)
- Architect secure, scalable identity and credential vaulting for enterprise-scale deployments
- Build real-time and historical analytics infrastructure for AI agent behavior
- Ensure policy enforcement and logging work end-to-end with no gaps for auditors or attackers
- Set the bar for developer experience through intuitive APIs and first-class observability
Docker is a globally distributed, remote-first team trusted by 20+ million monthly users. The company is positioned at the center of the AI agent revolution, providing sandboxed environments and secure infrastructure that make autonomous workflows trustworthy by default.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 8+ years of backend engineering experience with a track record of owning production-grade systems at significant scale
- Deep specialization in distributed systems, cloud-native infrastructure, and API design, recognized by peers as a go-to expert
- Experience building secure, high-throughput services (gateways, proxies, load balancers, policy engines)
- Fluency in Go and/or Rust
- Track record of identifying systemic gaps in architecture, process, or tooling and driving fixes across team boundaries
- Strong product mindset with real experience shaping technical direction, not just executing
- Comfortable operating with wide latitude and significant autonomy
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience
BONUS QUALIFICATIONS:
- Prior experience with OpenAI, Anthropic, or similar LLM APIs
- Familiarity with RAG architectures, vector databases, or agent frameworks (LangChain, AutoGPT, CrewAI)
- Experience with policy engines (OPA), observability frameworks (OpenTelemetry), or API gateways
- Understanding of OAuth 2.1, secret management, and cloud IAM systems
- Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and microservices architecture
- Track record of setting technical standards adopted by other teams
