[Remote] Senior Software Engineer (Guarded OS)

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Chainguard is the trusted source for open source, delivering hardened and secure builds of open source software. The Senior Software Engineer will play a key role in developing and maintaining the Elastic Build service and related tooling for Chainguard OS, ensuring systems are reliable, performant, and secure.ResponsibilitiesOperate and develop the Elastic Build service, our Kubernetes + GitHub + Cloud Run pipeline that converts package specifications into real downloadable artifacts, improving reliability, performance, resource usage, and multi-architecture supportMaintain and improve Melange, our package build tool, with a focus on usability, testing, patch management, and observability. Melange is largely feature-complete; the work here is hardening and instrumentation, not feature additionDesign and build automation for rebuild and review workflows — keeping a human in the approval chain while removing every step that can be automated. Support shared library transitions using build-time and runtime dependency analysisBuild monitoring, dashboards, and alerting. Create automated responses to common failure modes so human attention is reserved for novel problemsDefine and deliver a roadmap for build and update services within the OS teamDocument systems thoroughly and reduce single points of knowledgeContribute to distro-level package updates and help keep Chainguard OS up-to-date and secureSkills4+ years of software engineering experience with backend or distributed systemsStrong programming skills in Go. Comfortable writing production services, ideally including a Kubernetes operator or custom controllerHands-on experience operating production services at scale, and has responded to real incidents, restored service, and improved systems to prevent recurrenceHands-on experience with Kubernetes, Cloud Run, and cloud-native service designFamiliarity with GCP services (e.g., BigQuery, IAM, Cloud Logging)Experience with Terraform and CI/CD pipelinesStrong debugging and problem-solving skills across distributed systemsAble to work independently and communicate clearly in a remote-first environmentExperience contributing to or maintaining build, packaging, or tooling projectsObservability and monitoring experience (Grafana, Prometheus, Cloud Logging, etc.)Experience with Linux build or packaging systemsUnderstanding of dependency management and rebuild automationExperience with ARM64 build environmentsFamiliarity with BigQuery or Looker Studio for data analysisBenefitsFlexible & Remote-First Culture: Work remotely with team meetup opportunities, bi-annual destination summits, and a monthly stipend for coworking spaces, phone and internet costs.Our Approach to Equity: Receive stock options upon hire and promotion. Plus, you can participate in secondary offerings and have 10 years to exercise your options (yes, you read that correctly: 10 years!).100% Covered Health Insurance: We cover 100% of your health, vision and dental insurance premiums for you and your dependents. Nothing comes out of your paycheck.∞ Flexible Time Off: Take the time you need – to do our best work, we need to recharge and reset.18 Weeks Paid Parental Leave: We offer 18 weeks for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents, with the option to use it all at once or throughout your child's first year.Company OverviewChainguard is a cloud-native development platform that provides low-to-zero CVE container images for building and running applications. It was founded in 2021, and is headquartered in Kirkland, Washington, USA, with a workforce of 201-500 employees. Its website is https://www.chainguard.dev.Company H1B SponsorshipChainguard has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 1 in 2026, 1 in 2024, 2 in 2023. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role.