Software Engineer (Repositories)

Summary

Chainguard provides hardened, secure, and production-ready builds of open source software to help organizations build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk. The Software Engineer will build and operate backend systems for package registries, APIs, and artifact-serving services, contributing to reliability, scalability, performance, and customer-facing repository infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Build and improve customer-facing registries, APIs, and artifact-serving systems that make Chainguard software easy to consume securely and reliably
• Implement well-scoped projects and features from technical design through testing, rollout, monitoring, and iteration, with support from more experienced engineers
• Develop and operate backend services in Go that serve Libraries today and help establish the foundation for containers, images, APKs, and other artifact types over time
• Contribute to work involving scalability, reliability, observability, performance, and load testing for production systems
• Participate in design discussions and help make thoughtful decisions about service boundaries, APIs, data flows, and operational patterns
• Work with engineers and product partners across Chainguard to solve problems and deliver a cohesive repository experience
• Review code, ask questions, share what you learn, and contribute to a supportive engineering team
• Help investigate and resolve production issues, building your operational judgment and understanding of how customer-facing systems run in practice

Skills

• 2+ years of experience building software, with some experience working on backend or infrastructure systems
• Experience with Go, or strong programming experience in another language and the ability to learn Go quickly
• Experience contributing to software projects from implementation through testing and release
• Interest in building customer-facing infrastructure such as package registries, artifact repositories, APIs, developer platforms, or other backend systems
• Familiarity with software engineering fundamentals, including testing, code review, debugging, and version control
• Exposure to deploying or operating services in production, or a strong interest in developing those skills
• A systems-oriented mindset and curiosity: you like understanding how things work, investigating problems, and improving your solutions over time
• Clear communication and a collaborative approach, including the ability to ask for help, incorporate feedback, and work effectively in a remote environment
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure or infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform is helpful but not required
• 5+ years of experience building and operating production backend or infrastructure systems
• Strong Go experience, or deep backend systems experience with the ability to become productive in Go quickly
• Experience owning backend or infrastructure projects from design through production operation
• Experience building or operating customer-facing infrastructure such as package registries, artifact repositories, APIs, developer platforms, or other high-scale serving systems
• Strong judgment around reliability, observability, performance, security, and operational tradeoffs
• Experience deploying and managing services in production, including familiarity with cloud infrastructure and infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform
• Strong systems instincts and curiosity: you proactively identify problems, investigate root causes, and improve the platform before issues become bottlenecks for customers or internal teams
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, particularly in a remote environment where engineers are expected to work across teams and turn ambiguity into progress

Qualifications

Must Haves

• 2+ years of experience building software, with some experience working on backend or infrastructure systems
• Experience with Go, or strong programming experience in another language and the ability to learn Go quickly
• Experience contributing to software projects from implementation through testing and release
• Interest in building customer-facing infrastructure such as package registries, artifact repositories, APIs, developer platforms, or other backend systems
• Familiarity with software engineering fundamentals, including testing, code review, debugging, and version control
• Exposure to deploying or operating services in production, or a strong interest in developing those skills
• A systems-oriented mindset and curiosity: you like understanding how things work, investigating problems, and improving your solutions over time
• Clear communication and a collaborative approach, including the ability to ask for help, incorporate feedback, and work effectively in a remote environment

Nice to Haves

• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure or infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform is helpful but not required
• 5+ years of experience building and operating production backend or infrastructure systems
• Strong Go experience, or deep backend systems experience with the ability to become productive in Go quickly
• Experience owning backend or infrastructure projects from design through production operation
• Experience building or operating customer-facing infrastructure such as package registries, artifact repositories, APIs, developer platforms, or other high-scale serving systems
• Strong judgment around reliability, observability, performance, security, and operational tradeoffs
• Experience deploying and managing services in production, including familiarity with cloud infrastructure and infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform
• Strong systems instincts and curiosity: you proactively identify problems, investigate root causes, and improve the platform before issues become bottlenecks for customers or internal teams
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, particularly in a remote environment where engineers are expected to work across teams and turn ambiguity into progress

Benefits

• 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.
• Receive stock options upon hire and promotion. Plus, you can participate in secondary offerings and have 10 years to exercise your options.
• 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 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.