Principal AI Engineer

Chainguard

Chainguard

Software Engineering, Data Science
Remote
Posted on Jan 29, 2026

The role, in a nutshell:

The Staff Engineer, AI Solutions, will serve as a technical leader responsible for designing, building, and scaling AI-powered solutions that directly impact Chainguard’s go-to-market organization. This role partners closely with the Senior Director of AI Solutions to turn business problems into production-grade AI systems used by Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, and Revenue Operations. As a senior individual contributor, you will lead technical design, set engineering standards, and drive hands-on implementation of GenAI and machine learning solutions embedded in GTM workflows. You’ll operate at the intersection of AI, data, and business systems, balancing innovation with reliability, security, and scale. This role is ideal for an engineer who thrives on ownership, ambiguity, and delivering immediate impact.

What you will do

  • Experiment Constantly! Design, build, and operate production-grade AI solutions that support GTM use cases, including account intelligence, deal prioritization, forecasting, personalization, enablement, and customer insights.

  • Evaluate new AI technologies, frameworks, and vendors, contributing to build vs. buy decisions and technical direction.

  • Lead the technical architecture and implementation of GenAI and ML systems, including LLM-powered applications, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), recommendation systems, and predictive models.

  • Partner closely with the Senior Director of AI Solutions and GTM stakeholders to translate business requirements into scalable technical designs.

  • Own the end-to-end lifecycle of AI solutions, from data ingestion and feature development to model deployment, monitoring, and iteration.

  • Integrate AI capabilities into existing GTM platforms and workflows (e.g., Salesforce, internal tools, analytics platforms).

  • Establish best practices for AI engineering, including model evaluation, observability, performance optimization, and reliability.

  • Collaborate with Data, GTM Systems, Security, and Legal teams to ensure solutions meet data quality, privacy, security, and compliance standards.

  • Drive adoption by ensuring AI solutions are usable, trusted, and embedded into how GTM teams work day to day.

What we are looking for

  • 8+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, or ML engineering, with hands-on experience delivering AI-powered systems to production.

  • Strong practical experience with Generative AI and LLM-based systems, including prompt engineering, RAG architectures, and evaluation techniques.

  • Experience building and deploying machine learning models or intelligent systems that support decision-making or automation.

  • Solid understanding of data pipelines, feature engineering, APIs, and system integration, even if you’re not a full-time data platform engineer.

  • Proficiency in modern programming languages commonly used in AI systems (e.g., Python, SQL, and/or backend languages such as Go or Java).

  • Experience integrating AI solutions into business applications or GTM systems, such as CRM, analytics, or internal tooling.

  • Strong architectural judgment, with the ability to make tradeoffs between speed, quality, scalability, and maintainability.

About Us

Chainguard is the secure foundation for software development and deployment. By providing guarded open source software, built from source and updated continuously, Chainguard helps organizations eliminate threats in their software supply chains.

Founded by the industry's leading experts on open source software, security and cloud native development, Chainguard has built the largest library of open source software that is secure by default.

Chainguard’s mission is to be the safe source for open source.

We live and breathe our company values:

We are customer obsessed - We focus on delivering solutions to our customers that create value and make their lives better.

We have a bias for intentional action - We prioritize, plan, try things, and fail fast.

We don’t take ourselves too seriously (but we do serious work) - We are solving an important problem which takes focus, but we also like to enjoy the journey.

We trust each other and assume good intentions - We’re transparent with decisions to empower team members to make well informed decisions.

A few of the benefits we offer:

  • 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.
  • Our Approach to Equity: Receive stock options upon hire and promotion. Plus, you can participate in secondary offerings and have 10 years to exercise your options (yes, you read that correctly: 10 years!).
  • 100% Covered Health Insurance: 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 Paid Parental Leave: We offer 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.

If your experience is close but doesn’t fulfill all requirements, please apply. We’re building the best team in technology and are focused on hiring “Chainguardians'' with unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences.

Chainguard is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

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