Back to jobs
New

Senior Software Engineer (Guarded OS)

United States - Remote

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. By delivering hardened, secure, and production-ready builds of all the open source software engineers and AI agents rely on, Chainguard helps organizations build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk. 

Our customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and global industry leaders, including Anduril, Canva, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, OpenAI, Snap Inc., and Snowflake.

Chainguard is venture-backed by leading investors, including Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis VC, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital.

The role, in a nutshell:

Chainguard is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to take a significant role on the services and tooling that build and update the software that makes up Chainguard OS. This role sits within the GuardedOS team — the foundation layer on which every Chainguard product depends, and will primarily focus on Elastic Build, our Kubernetes-based package build pipeline.

This is a high-ownership, high-variety engineering role. You will design, implement, operate, and improve the systems that keep Chainguard OS Packages up to date. You'll be the person who turns ambiguity into an action plan and executes without breaking things — fast, with a clear eye on long-term maintainability.

 What you’ll do:

  • Operate 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 support.
  • Maintain 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 addition.
  • Design 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 analysis.
  • Build monitoring, dashboards, and alerting. Create automated responses to common failure modes so human attention is reserved for novel problems.
  • Define and deliver a roadmap for build and update services within the OS team.
  • Document systems thoroughly and reduce single points of knowledge.
  • Contribute to distro-level package updates and help keep Chainguard OS up-to-date and secure.

What we're looking for:

  • 4+ years of software engineering experience with backend or distributed systems.
  • Strong programming skills in Go. Comfortable writing production services, ideally including a Kubernetes operator or custom controller.
  • Hands-on experience operating production services at scale, and has responded to real incidents, restored service, and improved systems to prevent recurrence.
  • Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, Cloud Run, and cloud-native service design.
  • Familiarity with GCP services (e.g., BigQuery, IAM, Cloud Logging).
  • Experience with Terraform and CI/CD pipelines.
  • Strong debugging and problem-solving skills across distributed systems.
  • Able to work independently and communicate clearly in a remote-first environment.

Nice to haves: 

  •   Experience contributing to or maintaining build, packaging, or tooling projects.
  •   Observability and monitoring experience (Grafana, Prometheus, Cloud Logging, etc.).
  •   Experience with Linux build or packaging systems.
  •   Understanding of dependency management and rebuild automation.
  •   Experience with ARM64 build environments.
  •   Familiarity with BigQuery or Looker Studio for data analysis.

About Us

We live and breathe our company values:

  • We are customer obsessed — We focus on delivering solutions to our customers that create value and make their lives better.
  • We have a bias for intentional action — We prioritize, plan, try things, and fail fast.
  • We don't take ourselves too seriously (but we do serious work) — We are solving an important problem which takes focus, but we also like to enjoy the journey.
  • We trust each other and assume good intentions — We're transparent with decisions to empower team members to make well informed decisions.

A few of the benefits we offer:

  • Flexible & 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.

If your experience is close but doesn't fulfill all requirements, please apply. We're building the best team in technology and are focused on hiring "Chainguardians" with unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences.

Chainguard is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

By submitting your application, you acknowledge that Chainguard will process your personal data in accordance with Chainguard's Global Candidate Privacy Notice.

©2026 Chainguard. All Rights Reserved.

Apply for this job

*

indicates a required field

Resume/CV*

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Cover Letter

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Chainguard’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Select...
Select...
Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 04/30/2026

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury
Select...

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.