Principal Forward Deployed Engineer

Docker • San Francisco, CA

17d • $198,000 - $319,000 • Remote

About The Position

Docker Forward Deployed Engineers embed directly with strategic customers to solve complex technical problems and turn ambitious ideas into production outcomes. They work side by side with customer engineering teams to understand goals, constraints, and technical environments, then identify opportunities and design, build, and ship solutions. The role owns the technical journey from discovery and architecture through prototyping, implementation, and production rollout.

Solutions may use existing Docker products, extend Docker into new environments, integrate with customer and third-party systems, or inform future Docker capabilities. The engineer works closely with customers, Solutions Architects, and Docker Product and Engineering teams to develop reusable patterns and product capabilities. The role also helps establish the FDE engagement model and delivery standards, mentors other FDEs, and serves as a senior technical escalation point. Participation in an on-call rotation may be required, including support outside standard business hours, evenings, weekends, and holidays as needed.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years in a customer-facing technical role such as Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, Professional Services Engineer, or Software Engineer with consulting or technical-founder experience.
• Technical leadership across multiple engagements, teams, or domains, with the ability to set delivery standards, define repeatable patterns, and influence product direction using field evidence.
• Expert production coding skills in Go, Python, or TypeScript; a record of shipping and operating dependable software and leading technical design reviews.
• Deep hands-on Docker expertise, including Dockerfiles and multi-stage builds, Docker Compose, image and registry operations, container networking and storage, and container security fundamentals.
• Hands-on experience building LLMs and agents in production, including tool use and function calling, MCP server and client implementation, prompt and context engineering, and agent-behavior evaluation.
• Working knowledge of software supply-chain security, including SBOMs, image signing and attestation, vulnerability management, minimal and hardened base images, and secure CI/CD.
• Experience integrating enterprise systems, including identity providers such as Okta, Entra ID, or LDAP/Active Directory; OIDC or SAML; secrets managers; Kubernetes; and at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Ability to scope and deliver complex work in ambiguous, fast-moving customer environments and make sound trade-offs among scope, speed, and quality.
• Excellent communication with engineers, security and platform teams, and executive stakeholders; collaborative, low-ego approach and ability to lead through influence.
• Proven technical mentorship and ability to raise the bar for other engineers.
• High agency and comfort working autonomously in distributed, remote-first teams.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Willingness to travel to customer sites, estimated at up to 50%.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Docker Hardened Images, Docker Scout, MCP Gateway, MCP Toolkit, Docker Sandboxes, or Docker Model Runner.
• Experience deploying and operating coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, or Cursor in team or enterprise settings.
• Experience with air-gapped, regulated, or compliance-driven environments in financial services, healthcare, government, or similar sectors.
• Contributions to open-source projects in the container, Kubernetes, or MCP ecosystems.
• Prior experience founding or scaling a Forward Deployed Engineering or Professional Services practice.

Responsibilities

• Embed with customer engineering teams to design, build, and ship solutions from prototype through stable production rollout, using existing Docker products and patterns or developing and validating new solutions.
• Deliver technical artifacts such as custom MCP servers integrated with Docker Sandbox environments, Docker Compose definitions for multi-agent and model-backed applications, hardened-image standardization and migration, and tools that unblock customer progress.
• Integrate Docker's AI platform with customer systems, including identity providers, secrets management, private and air-gapped registries, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, and observability tooling.
• Own technical delivery for customer engagements: scope and sequence work, make speed-versus-quality trade-offs, remove blockers, and contribute code when needed.
• Translate customer security, compliance, and platform requirements into plans and help customers adopt agentic AI while protecting security, compliance, data sovereignty, and end-user experience.
• Establish customer quality and performance standards and work with Docker Product and Engineering to address issues outside established thresholds.
• Partner with customer security and platform teams on architecture reviews, threat modeling, and change control for agentic workloads.
• Work with Solutions Architects to enable off-the-shelf solutions and provide technical leadership when bespoke solutions are needed.
• Feed implementation learnings into reference architectures, SOW templates, success patterns, and reusable product capabilities.
• Support proofs of concept, escalations, and expansion conversations with technical expertise and working builds.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering to incorporate field innovations, learnings, and design patterns into existing or new products and services.
• Provide actionable, data-driven customer feedback to Product and Engineering to inform the roadmap and address adoption blockers.
• Define and codify the FDE engagement model, delivery standards, and quality bar across customers, regions, and delivery partners.
• Mentor and lead other Forward Deployed Engineers and participate in hiring.
• Serve as the senior technical escalation point for difficult customer problems and use incidents to improve Docker products and services.
• Maintain current knowledge of the agentic AI stack, including LLMs, APIs, MCP, coding agents, evaluation approaches, performance and quality thresholds, and deployment patterns.
• Participate in an on-call rotation if required, providing support outside standard business hours, including evenings, weekends, and holidays as needed.
• Travel to customer sites to work in person with customer teams, estimated at up to 50%.

Benefits

• Generous PTO, designated quarterly Whaleness Days, and a designated end-of-year Whaleness break.
• Home office support.
• Technology stipend equivalent to US$100 net per month.
• Annual learning and development 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, varying by country.
• Docker swag.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal