VP, Engineering

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. By delivering hardened, secure, and production-ready builds of all the open source software engineers and AI agents rely on, Chainguard helps organizations build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk. Our customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and global industry leaders, including Anduril, Canva, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, OpenAI, Snap Inc., and Snowflake. Chainguard is venture-backed by leading investors, including Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis VC, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital. The role, in a nutshell: We are looking for an Engineering VP to lead a new product engineering organization focused on rapidly bringing new products to market. Reporting to the SVP of Engineering, this executive leader will build, scale, and drive teams that take Chainguard into new product areas — moving from zero to one and one to many with speed, quality, and conviction. This is a builder's role: you'll stand up new teams, define how they operate, ship products on aggressive timelines, and scale what works. This Engineering VP is a member of the RD leadership team and plays a direct role in shaping company-wide engineering strategy, operating rhythms, and cross-functional alignment with Product, GTM, and Operations. You'll bring an instinct for using AI to move faster and more efficiently — not as a buzzword, but as a core operating principle for how your teams build, test, and ship software. What you'll do: Build and Ship New Products: Lead engineering efforts to take new product definitions from concept through design, implementation, and launch. You thrive in the ambiguity of early-stage product development — defining technical approaches, making fast decisions with imperfect information, and iterating rapidly based on customer feedback and market signals. Scale What Works: Once a product finds traction, build the team, processes, and architecture to scale it. Design systems and organizations that grow without breaking — transitioning from scrappy v1 to production-grade, enterprise-ready products. AI-First Engineering Culture: Embed AI deeply into how your teams operate. From AI-assisted code generation and automated testing to agentic workflows and intelligent automation, your teams will ensure that Chainguard leverages AI to ship faster, reduce toil, and amplify engineering talent. You stay current on the evolving AI landscape and push your teams to adopt what works. Organizational Leadership: Build your organization from the ground up. Hire and develop ICs, Managers, and Directors who are energized by building new things and owning outcomes. Structure teams for speed and autonomy — small, vertical, full-stack teams that own their products end-to-end. Delivery Excellence: Own quarterly outcome commitments for your organization. Ship on aggressive timelines without sacrificing quality. Establish lightweight processes that create accountability and predictability without slowing teams down. People-First Culture: Champion servant leadership, retention, and career development across your organization. Build a culture of trust, psychological safety, and high ownership. Foster an internal promotion culture and invest in growing the next generation of engineering leaders at Chainguard. Cross-Functional Partnership: Partner closely with Product Management, Sales, Customer Success, and other functions to ensure new products are solving real customer problems and driving business outcomes. Serve as a clear communicator of engineering progress, tradeoffs, and risks to executive stakeholders. Technical Direction: Provide strategic technical guidance and ensure sound architectural decisions across your teams. You don't need to write code daily, but you do need to understand deeply technical trade-offs and help teams make the right calls on build-vs-buy, infrastructure investment, and system design — espec ... (truncated, view full listing at source)