Senior Principal Software Engineer, Infrastructure

Docker has been one of the most loved brands in developer tooling, trusted by more than 20 million monthly users and over 20 billion container image pulls. From solo founders to the world's largest companies, developers rely on Docker to build, share, and run their applications across our suite of products including Docker Desktop, Docker Hub, and Docker Scout.

We are a globally distributed, remote-first team building the tools that define how software gets built and delivered. As AI agents redefine software development, Docker is at the center of that shift, providing the sandboxed environments, verified images, and secure infrastructure that make autonomous workflows trustworthy by default.

Docker is seeking a Senior Principal Engineer to serve as the technical visionary and architect for our Bridge organization—the foundational platform that powers accounts, billing, data, developer tools and enterprise governance across all Docker products. This is one of the most impactful individual contributor roles at Docker, responsible for defining and driving the technical strategy that enables Docker's transformation from a collection of individual products into a unified enterprise platform capable of supporting our next phase of growth.

As Senior Principal Engineer, you will establish strategic technical plans that span multiple engineering organizations, make critical architectural decisions that affect Docker's entire product portfolio, and drive execution of cross-company programs that directly enable revenue generation. You'll work at the intersection of Accounts, Billing, Data, Platform Infrastructure, Developer Tools and Enterprise Governance, ensuring these foundational systems work together seamlessly to support Docker's business model evolution from seat-based to usage-based pricing, our expansion into AI and security products, and our growth from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of enterprise customers.

This role requires someone who combines deep technical expertise across multiple domains with the business acumen to translate Docker's commercial strategy into platform capabilities. You'll be recognized across Docker as the definitive expert on platform architecture, consulted by executives on strategic technical decisions, and responsible for ensuring that every product team can launch enterprise-ready features rapidly because the platform handles the complexity underneath.

Responsibilities

Technical Vision & Strategic Planning

Define and own the multi-year technical vision for Docker's foundational platform, encompassing accounts, billing, data, enterprise governance, and infrastructure

Establish strategic plans and objectives for major platform initiatives, making architectural decisions that ensure effective achievement of Docker's business objectives

Contribute to and drive the strategic vision in collaboration with the VP of Engineering, translating organizational strategy into technical roadmaps that span multiple teams and years

Identify and prioritize platform investments that provide maximum leverage—capabilities built once that enable rapid iteration across all Docker products

Develop architectural principles and standards that guide technical decisions across the Bridge organization and influence product engineering teams

Anticipate future business needs and ensure platform architecture provides the flexibility to support Docker's evolving commercial models

Cross-Company Technical Leadership

Lead large cross-company programs that require coordination across Desktop, Hub, AI, Security, Cloud, and Platform teams

Architect the unified platform interfaces ("Control Planes") that enable product teams to answer canonical questions like "Can this user access this feature?" or "How much has this organization consumed?" without understanding underlying complexity

Drive convergence of fragmented systems across Docker—replacing product-specific implementations with shared platform capabilities for authentication, authorization, billing, and observability

Establish technical contracts between platform and product teams that enable independent velocity while ensuring consistency and reliability

Lead architectural reviews for major initiatives across Docker, ensuring alignment with platform strategy and long-term maintainability

Proactively identify and solve problems that impact critical areas of the business before they become blockers

Billing & Monetization Platform Architecture

Architect the Billing Control Plane that enables Docker to launch new product SKUs in weeks instead of months

Design the Usage-Based Billing platform that supports sophisticated pricing models combining base fees, per-seat charges, consumption pricing, and volume discounts

Ensure billing architecture supports Docker's commercial flexibility—enabling bundle pricing, enterprise contract structures, and rapid pricing experimentation

Define the metering infrastructure where products simply report usage events and the platform handles aggregation, rating, invoicing, and revenue recognition

Architect billing systems that scale to support Docker's growth while maintaining the accuracy and audibility that enterprise customers and finance require

Accounts & Identity Platform Architecture

Design the metadata-driven identity platform that serves as the single source of truth for authentication, authorization, and access control across all Docker products

Architect account infrastructure that supports Docker's enterprise requirements—domain-based account ownership, organization lifecycle management, and namespace separation

Define the Centralized Access Control Service that becomes the standard authorization point for all Docker products, replacing fragmented team-specific solutions

Ensure identity architecture supports both consumer simplicity and enterprise complexity—from individual developers to organizations with thousands of managed accounts

Design migration paths that transition millions of existing users seamlessly while introducing new capabilities progressively

Enterprise Governance Platform Architecture

Architect the Unified Internal Access Control Endpoint that abstracts entitlements, permissions, settings, policies, and feature flags into a single source of truth for all product teams

Design the Enterprise Command Center architecture that provides consolidated administrative experience across all Docker products

Define group management and RBAC architecture that supports global, group, and user-level policy scoping with IdP synchronization

Architect high-volume audit logging infrastructure and observability platform that meets enterprise compliance requirements (SOC 2, ISO 27001) and integrates with enterprise SIEM tools

Ensure governance architecture enables Docker to launch any new product "enterprise-ready" from day one with baseline governance controls

Data Platform Architecture

Define canonical data models that serve as the foundation for analytics, reporting, and machine learning across Docker

Architect real-time streaming infrastructure that enables immediate reactions to customer behavior—usage spikes, security anomalies, expansion opportunities

Design self-service data capabilities that democratize access while maintaining governance and accuracy

Ensure data architecture supports both operational needs (real-time dashboards, alerts) and analytical needs (business intelligence, forecasting)

Drive convergence to eliminate conflicting metrics that undermine trust in business decisions

Infrastructure & Developer Experience Architecture

Define the infrastructure platform vision that removes infrastructure as a bottleneck to innovation—enabling teams to deploy experimental services in minutes, not weeks

Architect standardized deployment patterns that encode best practices for security, scaling, monitoring, and reliability

Design infrastructure that specifically supports AI and agent initiatives—rapid deployment, programmatic environment creation, consistent APIs

Establish observability standards that provide distributed tracing, metrics, log aggregation, and error tracking out of the box for every service

Drive cost optimization across platform infrastructure while maintaining performance and reliability standards

Technical Excellence & Influence

Work with senior managers and directors across the Bridge organization to drive operations and strategy

Mentor and develop Staff and Principal engineers, raising the technical bar across the organization

Represent Docker's platform architecture externally through blog posts, conference talks, and technical community engagement

Participate in executive-level discussions on technical strategy, providing architectural perspective on business decisions

Drive build-vs-buy decisions for critical platform components, evaluating vendor solutions against Docker's specific requirements

This role may require participation in an on-call rotation to provide support outside of standard business hours, including evenings, weekends, and holidays, as needed.

Qualifications

Required

Technical Expertise

12+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated expertise across multiple platform domains (identity, billing, data, infrastructure)

Proven track record architecting and delivering large-scale distributed systems serving millions of users and thousands of enterprise customers

Deep expertise in at least two of: identity/access management systems, billing/monetization platforms, data platforms, or cloud infrastructure

Broad working knowledge across all platform domains with ability to make sound architectural decisions spanning multiple areas

Expert-level understanding of API design, service architecture, and system integration patterns at scale

Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and modern infrastructure patterns (Kubernetes, service mesh, infrastructure-as-code)

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

Strategic & Business Impact

Track record of establishing strategic technical plans that directly enabled business outcomes (revenue growth, cost reduction, market expansion)

Experience translating business strategy into technical architecture and roadmaps

Demonstrated ability to identify and prioritize investments that provide maximum platform leverage

Understanding of SaaS business models, enterprise sales cycles, and how platform capabilities influence commercial success

Experience making build-vs-buy decisions for critical platform components

Leadership & Influence

Proven ability to drive large cross-company technical programs requiring coordination across multiple engineering organizations

Experience working with VPs and executives to set and execute technical strategy

Track record of influencing technical direction without direct authority—building consensus across teams with different priorities

Strong communication skills with ability to present to executives, influence leadership, and drive alignment at all levels

Experience mentoring senior engineers and developing technical leadership

Enterprise Platform Experience