Remote Principal Software Engineer, Docker Agents (London) in Derby

At Docker, we make app development easier so developers can focus on what matters. Our remote-first team spans the globe, united by a passion for innovation and great developer experiences. With over 20 million monthly users and 20 billion image pulls, Docker is the #1 tool for building, sharing, and running apps—trusted by startups and Fortune 100s alike. We’re growing fast and just getting started. Come join us for a whale of a ride!

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer (Docker Agents) to join Docker’s AI engineering team to build the future of containerized AI agents. Docker containers are the perfect vehicle to host and run AI agents—providing isolation, portability, and reproducibility. You’ll be working on cagent, our open-source project, and expanding on it to enable developers to build, deploy, and scale intelligent agents using Docker’s container technology. This is a greenfield opportunity to shape how developers leverage containers for AI agents at massive scale. You’ll define the technical vision, lead architecture decisions, and partner with engineers and leaders across Docker to bring containerized agent capabilities into Docker’s developer experience.

Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership & Architecture: Define and drive the long-term technical strategy for Docker’s containerized agent platform, including core primitives, APIs, and extensibility patterns.
• Build Containerized Agent Systems: Design and implement systems that leverage Docker containers as the ideal runtime for AI agents, ensuring isolation, scalability, and portability.
• Expand cagent: Maintain and evolve the open-source cagent project, adding new capabilities for containerized agent deployment, orchestration, and lifecycle management.
• Agent Runtime Development: Build robust infrastructure for packaging, deploying, and managing agents in containers across local and cloud environments.
• Evaluation & Testing: Define evaluation frameworks to measure agent quality, reliability, and production readiness; plus the deployment effectiveness of containerized runtimes.
• Reliability & Operability: Establish standards for observability, performance, and operational excellence; lead critical production decision-making and incident learnings as needed.
• Rapid Prototyping: Iterate quickly on new agent capabilities and deployment patterns, moving from concept to production efficiently.
• Open Source Community: Engage with the cagent community, review contributions, and help grow the ecosystem.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Lead cross-functional technical discussions and influence architectural decisions across Docker’s AI initiatives (including sister teams and platform efforts).
• Mentorship & Enablement: Mentor senior engineers, raise the bar through design reviews, and accelerate team execution through clear technical direction and coaching.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years in technical leadership roles (Staff/Principal level or equivalent scope).
• Go Expertise: Strong proficiency in Go (this is absolutely required) - Docker’s primary language for backend systems.
• AI/ML Knowledge: Practical experience with large language models (LLMs) and agent development patterns.
• System Architecture: Proven ability to design scalable, distributed systems in production environments.
• Container Technology: Deep understanding of Docker, containerization best practices, and container orchestration.
• Cloud/Platform Depth: Experience building and operating platform services with strong foundations in observability, CI/CD, and security principles.
• Operational Excellence: Experience operating and evolving high-availability production systems with a focus on reliability and performance.
• Influence & Communication: Exceptional communication skills and ability to influence across technical and business domains.
• AI Frameworks: Experience with CrewAI, AGNO, ADK, LangChain/LangGraph or similar AI orchestration frameworks (preferred).
• Python Proficiency: Experience with Python for AI prototyping and tooling (preferred).
• Experience with Kubernetes or container orchestration platforms (preferred).
• Open source contributions and community engagement (preferred).
• Experience with agent evaluation, reliability, and observability techniques (preferred).

What to Expect

• First 30 days: Integrate into our AI engineering team building containerized agent infrastructure. Deep dive into cagent’s architecture, project roadmap, and the developer problems we’re solving. Identify the highest-leverage architectural and execution risks/opportunities; align with stakeholders on priorities. Contribute initial improvements to cagent and the containerized agent runtime foundations.
• First 90 days: Lead significant platform features or architectural improvements to cagent and our containerized agent ecosystem. Establish (or materially improve) technical standards for evaluation, reliability, and operability of agent systems. Drive alignment across internal teams on APIs, integration points, and a cohesive developer experience. Mentor engineers through design reviews and help accelerate onboarding and execution.
• One-Year Outlook: Drive major architectural decisions for our containerized agent platform that will impact millions of Docker users. Shape the long-term technical vision and execution plan for Docker’s agent ecosystem (open-source and product surfaces). Establish repeatable engineering practices for quality, performance, and operational excellence in agent systems. Lead initiatives to expand containerized agent capabilities for enterprise use cases and broader platform integrations. Grow the team’s technical capabilities through mentorship, strategy, and pragmatic delivery.

Docker does not offer visa sponsorship for this role.

Docker embraces diversity and equal opportunity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. The more inclusive we are, the better our company will be.