Staff Software Engineer (Customer Platform)

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source, delivering secure and production-ready builds of open source software. The Staff Software Engineer will own critical features end-to-end, design and evolve backend systems, and provide technical leadership across teams, ensuring seamless integration and customer experience.

Responsibilities:

• Own features end-to-end: from design through implementation, rollout, and iteration, in close partnership with Product Management and the partner Chainguard teams
• Design, build, and evolve the backend systems (Go, REST/gRPC APIs) that power Chainguard's entitlement, policy, and customer onboarding services
• Serve as the primary technical interface between Customer Platform and other Chainguard engineering teams (Containers, Libraries, OS packages) — understanding their requirements and building integration paths
• Extend Chainguard's agentic AI foundation into customer-facing product experiences
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to senior and mid-level engineers; help the team break down ambiguity and build toward clear outcomes
• Contribute to a product-driven roadmap with real deadlines and clear outcomes, helping the team prioritize tradeoffs and ship iteratively rather than waiting for "perfect"

Requirements:

• Production Go experience is a must. At the staff level, the expectation is deep, idiomatic Go, not 'willing to learn'
• Strong ownership of API design and backend systems at scale; you've shipped and operated them in production
• Experience working across multiple engineering teams to align on technical standards, integration patterns, and shared infrastructure
• Comfort operating in ambiguity you come with a diagnosis, a recommendation, and a path forward, not just a problem statement
• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and provide technical guidance without needing a management title to do it
• Familiarity with cloud-native environments (Kubernetes, cloud provider APIs) is a strong plus
• Experience with entitlements, billing systems, or platform infrastructure is a plus but not required
• Prior exposure to building or extending AI-powered product features is a plus