Remote Staff Software Engineer, Docker Agents (London) in Newcastle upon Tyne

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!

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 will be working on cagent, our open-source project (https://github.com/docker/cagent), 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 will work alongside a team of seasoned engineers, collaborating with our sister teams working on Ask Gordon and Docker's broader AI platform. This is a unique opportunity to combine cutting-edge AI techniques with container technology to solve real-world developer problems.

Please note: this role is only available to candidates currently located in London (or reasonable commuting distance to London). We are unable to make exceptions to this location requirement.

• As a Staff Engineer, you will partner with the engineering leadership to help set technical direction and serve as a guide and mentor as the team grows and matures.
• 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 and orchestration.
• Agent Runtime Development: Build robust infrastructure for packaging, deploying, and managing agents in containers.
• RAG Integration: Enhance agent capabilities with Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems to provide contextual knowledge and domain expertise (secondary focus).
• Evaluation & Testing: Design robust evaluation frameworks to measure agent performance, reliability, and containerized deployment effectiveness.
• 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: Work closely with product managers, designers, and engineers across Docker's AI teams to integrate containerized agent capabilities into Docker's developer experience.
• On-Call Rotation: Take part in on-call rotation for your team; respond to incidents, debug production issues, and drive continuous improvement of system reliability.

• Go Expertise: Strong, demonstrated, professional 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.
• System Architecture: Proven ability to design scalable, distributed systems.
• Container Technology: Deep understanding of Docker, containerization best practices, and container orchestration.
• RAG Systems: Experience building Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems (secondary focus).
• Rapid Iteration: Demonstrated ability to prototype quickly and iterate based on feedback.
• 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).
• 8+ years of directly applicable experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Integrate into our dynamic AI engineering team building containerized agent infrastructure.
• Deep dive into cagent's architecture and our containerized agent deployment roadmap.
• Contribute your first enhancements to cagent with the help of your team.
• Understand our technical stack and begin collaborating with sister AI teams.

• Lead significant features or improvements to cagent and our containerized agent platform.
• Enhance agent deployment capabilities and container-based orchestration patterns.
• Collaborate with the open-source community on cagent development.
• Help other new team members onboard.
• Regularly interact with internal stakeholders and analyze user feedback.

• Drive major architectural decisions for our containerized agent platform that will impact millions of Docker users.
• Continue to help grow the team and develop efficient agent development processes.
• Contribute to evaluation frameworks and performance optimization across our agent systems.
• Lead initiatives to expand containerized agent capabilities for enterprise use cases.
• Grow your skills in enterprise-grade containerized AI system architecture and deployment.
• Shape the future direction of cagent and Docker's agent ecosystem.

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.