Principal Product Designer (Container Platform)

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. As a Principal Product Designer, you distill complex developer workflows into insights that shape design, product, and engineering decisions. You have deep, informed opinions about how developers are changing what it means to build and ship software. You're AI-native in your process: using tooling to move faster, synthesize earlier, and prototype first. You're passionate about technology and even more passionate about the people that use it. You tirelessly advocate for the developer and have deep empathy for the friction they hit every day. You put their needs first, and you have strong opinions, loosely held, about how to serve them better. Docker is modernizing how millions of builders experience development. We're looking for a Principal Product Designer who is deeply passionate about bringing human-centered thinking to developer tooling and who is ready to help lead the redesign of our container platform from a place of genuine conviction about where the industry is heading. The ideal candidate enjoys solving big problems with elegant solutions and has a strong track record of delivering extraordinary experiences for technical users. You work quickly, think in systems, and understand the difference between a workflow that technically works and one that developers actually trust and return to time and time again. Your ideas directly influence Docker's product direction and growth. You have excellent communication skills and a real ability to bring cross-functional teams along with you, from individual engineers and PMs to senior leadership. You play well with others. You thrive in a fast-paced, remote-first environment. You bring a distinct point of view, you elevate the designers around you, and you're just as open to feedback on your own work as you are generous with it for others. Sound like you? Join the team! RESPONSIBILITIES - Own the end-to-end design for the container platform - Distill complex developer workflows into elegant, opinionated solutions - Collaborate and iterate with a cross-functional team of designers, product managers, and engineers - Use AI tools actively throughout the design process for prototyping, synthesis, and iteration - Work across stakeholders to build consensus on a shared product vision - Constructively challenge existing approaches and push for better solutions - Mentor and coach members of the product design team - Partner with senior leadership to design strategy QUALIFICATIONS - Proven track record influencing product direction and strategy with actionable, research-informed design - Deep experience designing for developer tools, platforms, or infrastructure products - Solid understanding of qualitative and quantitative research methods with an ability to synthesize and communicate quickly - Fluency with prototyping, quick visualizations, and iterative development - Demonstrated ability to learn new technology domains and develop strong opinions about them - Excellent project management, communication, and presentation skills - Experience leading, coaching, or mentoring product designers. We currently have a number of staff designers and senior designers and this role is expected to help level up the team as a whole. You’re not working in a silo, but rather defining design practice at Docker - Familiarity with container technologies, DevOps tooling, or infrastructure products ATTRIBUTES WE LOOK FOR - Empathy for developers as end-users; you understand their frustration with bad tooling personally - Strong opinions, loosely held; you advocate hard and change up gracefully - Humility and a genuine learning mindset - Ability to explain complex ideas simply without dumbing them down - Excellent written, verbal, and visual communication skills - Reflective, accountable, and ownership-oriented - AI forward design process: you're meaningfully integrated tooling into your design practice WHAT TO EXPECT FIRST 30 DAYS - Complete onboarding and ramp up on Docker Desktop, the CLI, and container platform systems. Go beyond surface level and understand how the pieces connect. - Audit all existing design work across the container platform: what has been tried, what shipped, what didn't, and why. - Shadow customer calls to start building a ground-level view of how people actually use the platform and where the friction lives. - By week 3, be sharing work and early thinking with the team. Not polished, just visible. - By the end of month one, have a working directional point of view on where the container platform needs to go. FIRST 60 DAYS - Build active relationships across engineering, product, sales, and support leadership. - Be actively designing and shipping work. Show up in critiques and stay in the flow with engineering and PM partners. - Establish your agentic workflow scaffolding: define how you are using AI tooling for prototyping, synthesis, and iteration, and get in sync with how the broader design team is working. - Crystallize a design-led point of view on where the container platform is headed and share it with your manager and team. ONE-YEAR OUTLOOK - Fully own the design of the container platform end to end across workflows, visual quality, and system coherence, with demonstrable improvement from where things were on day one. - Act as a genuine strategic thought partner to senior leadership on the container platform and Docker's broader direction. - Feed insight and craft back to the rest of the design team, especially admin and bridge-side designers. Show what principal-level work looks like in motion, not in a job description. - By year one the container platform should feel unmistakably better in workflow clarity, visual craft, and developer trust, and that should be traceable to your presence on the team. Docker does not offer visa sponsorship for this role. We use Covey as part of our hiring and / or promotional process for jobs in NYC and certain features may qualify it as an AEDT. As part of the evaluation process we provide Covey with job requirements and candidate submitted applications. We began using Covey Scout for Inbound https://getcovey.com/product/covey-scout-inbound on April 13, 2024. Please see the independent bias audit report covering our use of Covey here https://getcovey.com/nyc-local-law-144. Perks - Freedom & flexibility; fit your work around your life - Designated quarterly Whaleness Days plus end of year Whaleness break - Home office setup; we want you comfortable while you work - 16 weeks of paid Parental leave (after 6 months of employment) - Technology stipend equivalent to $100 USD net/month - PTO plan that encourages you to take time to do the things you enjoy - Training stipend for conferences, courses and classes - Equity; we are a growing start-up and want all employees to have a share in the success of the company - Docker Swag - Medical benefits, retirement and holidays vary by country - Remote-first culture, with offices in Seattle and Paris Docker embraces diversity and equal opportunity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. The more inclusive we are, the better our company will be. #LI-REMOTE