Docker
Principal Forward Deployed Engineer
$198K–$319K
San Francisco, CA +2 · Remote · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 22, 2026
- Location
- San Francisco, CA
San Jose, CA
Seattle, WA - Experience
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years in a customer-facing technical role.
- Education
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Visa sponsorship
- Visa sponsorship is considered case by case based on business needs.
About the job
Embeds with strategic customers to design, build, and deploy Docker-based solutions, including production agentic AI systems, and turns field learnings into reusable patterns and product capabilities.
What you'll do
- Lead customer engagements from discovery and architecture through implementation and production rollout, contributing code and delivering working technical artifacts.
- Help customers adopt agentic AI safely by integrating Docker with enterprise systems and addressing security, compliance, and platform requirements.
- Set FDE delivery standards, mentor engineers, provide senior technical escalation, and feed customer insights into Docker Product and Engineering.
What they ask for
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years in a customer-facing technical role.
- Expert production coding skills in Go, Python, or TypeScript; deep hands-on Docker expertise; and production experience building with LLMs and agents, including MCP.
- Experience with software supply chain security and enterprise integrations, including identity systems, secrets managers, Kubernetes, and at least one major cloud platform.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience; travel to customer sites estimated at up to 50%.
Nice to have
- Experience with Docker Hardened Images, Docker Scout, MCP Gateway, MCP Toolkit, Docker Sandboxes, or Docker Model Runner.
- Experience deploying coding agents in team or enterprise settings, regulated or air-gapped environments, open-source contributions, or founding/scaling an FDE or Professional Services practice.
Pay
$198K – $319K USD base salary
Tools
Go, Python, TypeScript, Docker Compose, MCP, LLMs, Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, GCP
AI focus
Build and integrate production agentic AI solutions, including MCP servers and coding-agent environments; help customers govern AI adoption and evaluate agent behavior.
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