Docker - Principal Technical Program Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering
Requirements
• 10+ years of technical program management experience, including 4+ years at Staff level or above, supporting customer-facing engineering, professional services, or field engineering teams. • A track record of delivering commitments on schedule for enterprise customers, including contractual or executive-visible deadlines. • Experience defining standards, quality bars, and operating processes that other teams adopted. • Experience running dependencies across many engineering teams that you do not manage, and getting reliable dates from them through influence. • Strong technical background in cloud platforms, containers, and modern software delivery. You can read a design, challenge an estimate, and tell a real blocker from a vague one. • Experience choosing metrics and setting targets, including working with incomplete data and deciding what is good enough to act on. • Executive communication skills, with the ability to deliver difficult news early and clearly to customer stakeholders, Docker leaders, and engineers. • High agency and comfort working autonomously in a distributed, remote-first company where processes are still being defined. • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. • Occasional travel to customer sites and to Docker team gatherings. • Prior experience supporting a Forward Deployed Engineering, Professional Services, Solutions Engineering, or Customer Engineering organization. • Familiarity with the agentic AI ecosystem, including coding agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and enterprise requirements for security and governance of AI workloads. • Experience with regulated or compliance-driven customers in financial services, healthcare, government, or similar sectors. • Experience at a developer tools, infrastructure software, or platform company. • Familiarity with Docker products, Kubernetes, and cloud-native development platforms. • What Success Looks Like • FDE has written delivery standards, a quality bar, and KPI targets that FDEs, Field, Product, and Engineering all know and use. • Every customer commitment and every Docker engineering commitment to FDE has an owner and a date, and strategic customer deadlines are met. • FDE operating reviews run weekly, produce decisions, and close their actions. • FDE capacity, hiring, and customer alignment are planned ahead of demand. • Visa sponsorship: Docker considers visa sponsorship on a case-by-case basis based on business needs. • Visa sponsorship: • _______________________________________________________________________
Responsibilities
• Define What Good Looks Like • Define the FDE delivery standards, engagement model, and quality bar, and write them down so engagements are consistent across customers, regions, and engineers. • Decide which metrics matter for FDE, set targets, and revise them as the team learns. • Turn lessons from each engagement into reusable practice and product improvements. • Run the FDE Business • Give executives a clear account of what is on track, what is at risk, what decision is needed, and from whom. • Own FDE capacity management and staffing plans with FDE leadership and recruiting: which engineers are aligned to which customers, where the gaps are, where and when to hire to stay ahead of demand. • Own Customer and Engineering Commitments • Instrument every commitment Docker has made to FDE customers, and every commitment Docker Product and Engineering teams have made to FDE. • Track commitments, map dependencies across teams, and surface risks early enough to act on them. • Negotiate and confirm dates with teams that run on their own planning processes, and hold them to those dates. • Influence Across Docker • Represent FDE with Product and Engineering leadership. Make sure customer needs are well defined using data, and that product decisions map to achievable FDEs action. • Improve the internal processes that slow collaboration between Field, Product, and Engineering, and bring those improvements to the wider company when they work. • Present FDE results and risks to Docker executives and customer stakeholders. • Lead the Program Practice • Set priorities for junior TPMs, define the reporting FDE needs, and mentor them in program management practice. • Choose the tools and standards FDE uses to track work. • _______________________________________________________________________
Benefits
• All full-time roles include equity. Final compensation is determined on factors including but not limited to experience, skills, qualifications, and location. • United States: $162,505 - $254,650 base • ______________________________________________________________________ • Open vacancy: This posting is for an existing open role. • Open vacancy: • AI in hiring: Docker may use AI-assisted tools during our recruiting process. • AI in hiring: • Interview recordings: Candidates will be invited to opt in to interview recordings to support interviewer calibration and consistent evaluations. Recordings are optional and require explicit consent. • Interview recordings: • Remote-first by design – Work from your home, with offices in Seattle and Paris for connection and collaboration. • Remote-first by design • Flexibility that fits your life – We trust you to manage your schedule while delivering great work. • Flexibility that fits your life • Time to recharge – Generous PTO, designated quarterly Whaleness Days, and a designated end-of-year Whaleness break. • Time to recharge • Technology stipend – Equivalent to US$100 net per month to help support your work. • Technology stipend • US$100 net per month • Learning & development – Annual stipend for conferences, courses, certifications, and continued learning. • Learning & development • Parental leave – 16 weeks of paid parental leave after six months of employment. • Parental leave • Equity for all full-time employees – Share in Docker's long-term success as we continue to grow. • Equity for all full-time employees • Comprehensive benefits – Medical, retirement, and paid holidays vary by country. • Docker swag – Because representing the whale never gets old. • Docker swag
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