Customer Support Manager

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source, delivering secure and production-ready builds of open source software. The Customer Support Manager will manage the AMER Technical Support Engineering team, ensuring quality and reliability in the escalation path from customer-reported issues to engineering resolution while also focusing on team development and operational efficiency.

Responsibilities:

• Own the L2/L3 escalation boundary: define routing criteria, review escalation quality, and drive down unnecessary L3 load without increasing customer time-to-resolution
• Maintain and improve escalation intake workflows including triage standards, ticket hygiene, and handoff artifacts for engineering partners
• Track escalation health metrics and report on trends to engineering leadership; identify capacity risks in eng teams before they become bottlenecks
• Run escalation retrospectives to close the loop on resolution patterns and feed signal back into product and documentation
• Manage, coach, support and develop the AMER Technical Support Engineering team, with direct attention to technical depth and debugging rigor
• Operate career leveling frameworks for IC growth (L1 through L6); hold bar on promotions and ensure growth plans are actionable
• Coordinate AMER handoffs with APAC and EMEA peer managers to maintain follow-the-sun coverage quality: clear ownership at every handoff, with uninterrupted SLA performance
• Identify and close skill gaps proactively, particularly in Linux fundamentals, container security, and Kubernetes ecosystems
• Own the support tooling stack including ticketing systems, AI-assisted triage, and deflection tooling
• Partner with engineering to build and maintain LLM-assisted workflows for escalation intake, ticket quality review, and knowledge retrieval
• Drive adoption of AI tooling across the team; know where automation adds leverage and where it introduces risk
• Use support data to surface product quality signals and operational trends to engineering and product leadership
• Serve as the primary interface between Technical Support Engineering and product engineering teams for escalated issues
• Maintain a functional relationship with Customer Success and GTM without allowing those teams to define support quality standards or escalation criteria
• Contribute to product feedback loops through reproducible, well-scoped bug reports and actionable pattern analysis

Requirements:

• 4+ years managing technical support engineers or software engineers in a production-facing environment
• Demonstrated ability to design and operate an escalation process: not just follow one
• Technical credibility in the Linux ecosystem; comfortable reading logs, understanding container runtimes, and engaging with engineering teams as an active peer
• Strong written communication; capable of writing clear escalation summaries, retrospective reports, and leadership-facing metrics briefs
• Track record of developing engineers through real feedback, structured growth plans, and calibrated performance conversations
• Comfort operating in a globally distributed support org with peer managers in other regions; strong handoff discipline
• Experience with container security, DevSecOps tooling, Kubernetes, or open source software ecosystems
• Familiarity with Zendesk or similar ticketing platforms at an operational level (workflows, configuration, reporting)
• Exposure to AI-assisted support tooling, LLM-based triage, or knowledge retrieval systems