# Principal Forward Deployed Engineer at Docker

- Company: Docker
- What the company does: Run AI agents and containers safely, anywhere. Docker gives builders trusted sandboxes, governance, and a secure supply chain for modern software. Backed by Greylock, Insight and Lightspeed.
- Company website: https://www.docker.com/
- Type: Startups
- Level: Principal and up
- Location: San Jose, CA
- Work setup: On-site
- Pay: $198K to $319K base salary per year (USD)
- Posted: 2026-09-22
- Apply by: 2026-11-06
- Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/docker/f50260bc-5da2-475d-bc4b-172ad7c5aa01
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/docker-principal-forward-deployed-engineer/

## About the role

Own technical delivery on your engagements: scope the work, sequence it, make trade-offs between speed and quality, remove blockers early, and contribute directly to code whenever progress depends on it. Act as the senior technical escalation point on the hardest problems impacting your customers. Every incident is an opportunity to improve Docker products and services.

## What they're looking for

- 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 a proven ability to set delivery standards, define repeatable patterns, and influence product direction through field evidence
- Expert production coding skills in Go, Python, or TypeScript, with a track record of shipping and operating software that other people depend on and of leading technical design reviews
- Deep, hands-on Docker expertise: Dockerfiles and multi-stage builds, Docker Compose, image and registry operations, container networking and storage, and container security fundamentals
- Hands-on experience building with LLMs and agents in production, including tool use and function calling, the Model Context Protocol (MCP server and client implementation), prompt and context engineering, and evaluation of agent behavior
- Working knowledge of software supply chain security: SBOMs, image signing and attestation, vulnerability management, minimal and hardened base images, and secure CI/CD

Tags: Engineering