Sr. Software Engineer - Stacklok Enterprise
Stacklok · Remote: North America · $189,000–$231,000 (stated in the posting)
Stacklok is led by CEO Craig McLuckie and CTO Joe Beda, two of the creators of Kubernetes. Kubernetes helped give enterprises more freedom over where and how they run software. Now we're bringing that same open approach to AI agents.
As AI agents take on more autonomous, long-running work, enterprises need infrastructure to run them securely and reliably at scale, without giving up control of their data, systems, or models. We're building open, Kubernetes-native infrastructure that brings together agent execution, secure access to tools and systems, and centralized controls for identity, permissions, and policy. This is an opportunity to help shape a foundational layer for enterprise AI while the architecture is still being defined.
We build in the open alongside the community. Our open source projects include ToolHive, an MCP platform that secures more than 20 million tool calls each month, and Mecatl, a cloud-native agent harness. Our commercial offering, Stacklok Enterprise, extends these capabilities with an AI gateway, centralized identity, policy enforcement, and observability.
Location
This is a remote role based in North America, with a strong preference for candidates located in the U.S. Eastern Time Zone.
The Opportunity
Enterprises are moving AI agents into production, and they want to run them the way they run everything else: on their own Kubernetes clusters, behind their firewall, and connected to the identity systems they already use. Stacklok Enterprise, our commercial platform for running and governing AI agents, is built for that, by a team whose founders co-created Kubernetes.
As a Senior Engineer on the core platform team, you will design and build major parts of the platform and own them from design through production. That work runs in customers' Kubernetes environments, so your design tradeoffs shape how the product holds up in the field. The areas you own will shift as the product grows, and you will mentor the engineers building alongside you.
Customers are onboarding now. As one of the key engineers helping them reach production, you will also work with some as design partners on our newest features and products. It is a high-ownership role in an emerging category, with a short path from customer feedback to what ships.
What Success Looks Like: First 6-12 Months
- Designed and shipped a complete subsystem end to end that is now running in production for enterprise customers.
- Helped take one or more customers from proof-of-concept to production on their own Kubernetes, and turned their feedback into a platform feature.
- Raised the team's bar by mentoring engineers and strengthening the product engineering culture.
- Improved how the team ships changes to customers, including where AI-assisted workflows helped and where they created rework.
- Became the owner and go-to decision maker for one or more platform areas, with the team routing design questions your way.
In This Role, You Will
- Own the design and implementation of platform subsystems in Stacklok Enterprise end to end, from technical design through production and ongoing improvement.
- Write production Go code for commercial software that runs reliably in customer Kubernetes environments, with observability, testing, and error handling built in.
- Make the design tradeoffs for the areas you own with product and engineering leadership, and mentor the engineers building alongside you.
- Work with customers to successfully operationalize the Enterprise Platform and turn their feedback into product improvements.
- Contribute to the open-source ToolHive codebase and collaborate with community contributors on shared work.
- Apply AI-assisted workflows and strengthen reusable tooling and playbooks so each engagement moves faster for the team.
Desired Skill & Experience
We do not expect every candidate to meet every point below. If this role excites you and you bring most of it, we encourage you to apply.
- Proficiency in Go, with a proven track record designing and shipping complete production-grade distributed systems as part of a commercial software product.
- Hands-on experience deploying and running applications on Kubernetes in production, ideally across different customer cloud environments, such as AWS, Azure and GCP.
- Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers, driving code review, and raising the quality of a team's work.
- Experience working directly with customers to onboard them and to debug the product, from diagnosing issues in their environments to driving fixes back into the codebase.
- AI-first mindset, with experience integrating AI tools into development practices and turning AI-assisted workflows into repeatable velocity gains for the team.
- Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to explain complex technical ideas to technical and non-technical audiences.
- Startup mentality and intrinsic motivation, including a self-directed, hands-on approach and the ability to thrive in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.
Compensation: The anticipated base salary range for this position is $189,000 - $231,000. In addition to base salary, this role offers equity and a comprehensive benefits package.
#LI-Remote
Why Join Us?
At Stacklok, we believe great technology is built by teams that support, challenge, and inspire one another. We are AI maximalists, confident in AI’s potential and committed to building technology people can trust. We use AI in our own work and experiment openly.
You’ll build alongside people with deep experience in open source, cloud-native technologies, security, and developer tools. We stay close to customers, use our own products, and share what we learn to keep improving. You’ll have room to make decisions, support when you need it, and teammates who push themselves to do their best work.
We offer competitive compensation and equity, comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, and a flexible hybrid or remote work environment. Our benefits include flexible PTO, paid holidays, and paid parental leave, along with team offsites to collaborate and connect in person.
If you’re excited about what we’re building and want to work with people who care about their craft, community, and each other, we’d love to hear from you.
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Stacklok Inc, is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities for all people and place great value in both diversity and inclusiveness. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to their, or any other person's, perceived or actual race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, family care status, or any other basis protected by law.