Director – Engineering

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!

This is a remote position open to candidates located on the West Coast, with a preference for those based in the Seattle, WA area. We also offer an optional office space in Seattle for anyone who prefers an on-site or hybrid work environment.

Role Overview

We're seeking an experienced Director of Platform Infrastructure to lead critical aspects of Docker's infrastructure platform. In this role, you'll oversee the reliability, efficiency, and developer experience of foundational systems that power Docker's products and services. You'll lead teams responsible for site reliability engineering, cloud cost optimization, internal developer tooling, and core infrastructure components including our Envoy-based service mesh and networking layer.

This is a high-impact leadership role where you'll shape the technical strategy for platform infrastructure while building and mentoring world-class engineering teams. You'll work closely with engineering leaders across the organization to ensure Docker's infrastructure is reliable, cost-effective, and enables rapid product innovation.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership & Strategy

• Define and execute the technical vision and roadmap for platform infrastructure, balancing reliability, performance, cost, and developer velocity

• Build, mentor, and retain high-performing teams across reliability engineering, FinOps, developer tooling, and foundational infrastructure

• Partner with VP of Engineering and peer directors to align infrastructure investments with company priorities and product roadmaps

• Establish engineering standards, best practices, and operational excellence across all platform infrastructure domains

• Drive organizational culture of ownership, continuous improvement, and technical excellence

Reliability & Operations

• Own end-to-end reliability strategy for Docker's production infrastructure, including SLO/SLI frameworks, incident management, and on-call processes

• Lead efforts to improve system observability, monitoring, and alerting across the platform

• Drive post-incident review processes and ensure learnings translate into systemic improvements

• Partner with product engineering teams to build reliability into application architecture

• Balance investment between reliability improvements and feature delivery

Cloud Cost Optimization

• Develop and execute FinOps strategy to optimize Docker's cloud infrastructure spend across AWS, Azure, and GCP

• Implement cost visibility, attribution, and chargeback mechanisms across engineering teams

• Identify and execute on cost optimization opportunities including resource rightsizing, commitment management, and architectural efficiency

• Build culture of cost awareness across engineering organization while maintaining performance and reliability standards

• Partner with finance and business teams on cloud budget planning and forecasting

Developer Tooling & Experience

• Own the strategy and execution for internal developer platforms and tooling that accelerate engineering productivity

• Lead development and maintenance of CI/CD pipelines, build systems, and deployment automation

• Champion developer experience improvements across the engineering organization

• Build self-service capabilities that enable product teams to operate independently

• Measure and improve developer productivity metrics and engineering velocity

Foundational Infrastructure

• Oversee critical infrastructure components including Envoy-based service mesh, API gateways, and networking infrastructure

• Drive adoption of modern infrastructure patterns including service mesh, zero-trust networking, and platform engineering

• Ensure foundational components are scalable, secure, and well-documented

• Partner with security and compliance teams to ensure infrastructure meets regulatory and security requirements

• Balance technical debt reduction with new capability development

Cross-functional Collaboration

• Work closely with product engineering, security, data platform, and business operations teams

• Serve as infrastructure subject matter expert in architecture reviews and technical planning

• Communicate infrastructure strategy, roadmaps, and constraints to technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Build strong relationships with vendor partners and open source communities

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in infrastructure engineering, SRE, or platform engineering roles

• 5+ years of engineering management experience, including leading managers and directors

• Deep technical expertise in cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, or GCP), container orchestration (Kubernetes), and distributed systems

• Proven track record building and scaling reliable, high-performance infrastructure at significant scale

• Strong understanding of service mesh technologies (Envoy, Istio, Linkerd) and modern networking concepts

• Experience implementing SRE practices, SLO/SLI frameworks, and incident management processes

• Demonstrated success in cloud cost optimization and FinOps practices

• Experience building developer platforms and internal tooling that improve engineering productivity

• Strong technical communication skills with ability to influence across all levels of the organization

• Track record of building diverse, inclusive, high-performing teams

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in container and cloud-native technologies

• Background in both startup and large-scale enterprise environments

• Experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform, Pulumi) and GitOps practices

• Knowledge of observability tools and practices (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, etc.)

• Contributions to open source infrastructure projects

• Experience with multi-cloud and hybrid cloud architectures

• Understanding of security, compliance, and regulatory requirements for infrastructure

• Track record of technical writing and public speaking

Why Docker?

At Docker, you'll have the opportunity to work on infrastructure that directly impacts millions of developers globally. Our engineering culture values technical excellence, ownership, and continuous learning. We believe in empowering our teams to make decisions, take calculated risks, and learn from failures. You'll work alongside talented engineers who are passionate about building robust, scalable systems that enable the future of software development.

We use Covey as part of our hiring and / or promotional process for jobs in NYC and certain features may qualify it as an AEDT. As part of the evaluation process we provide Covey with job requirements and candidate submitted applications. We began using Covey Scout for Inbound on April 13, 2024.

Please see the independent bias audit report covering our use of Covey here.

Perks

• Freedom & flexibility; fit your work around your life

• Designated quarterly Whaleness Days

• Home office setup; we want you comfortable while you work

• 16 weeks of paid Parental leave

• Technology stipend equivalent to $100 net/month

• PTO plan that encourages you to take time to do the things you enjoy

• Quarterly, company-wide hackathons

• Training stipend for conferences, courses and classes

• Equity; we are a growing start-up and want all employees to have a share in the success of the company

• Docker Swag

• Medical benefits, retirement and holidays vary by country

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.

Due to the remote nature of this role, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship.

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