Customer Support Manager

• Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. By delivering hardened, secure
• production-ready builds of all the open source software engineers and AI agents rely on, Chainguard helps organizations build faster, stay compliant
• 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:
• You will manage the AMER Technical Support Engineering team, part of a broader global follow-the-sun support organization under the Engineering organization. Your primary accountability is the quality and reliability of the escalation path: from customer-reported issue to engineering resolution. You own the operational layer between L2 and L3
• means you think about ticket routing, escalation criteria, handoff quality
• engineering capacity as an interconnected system, not as separate concerns.
• This role is for an engineering-minded Support Manager with deep technical knowledge and strong customer relationship skills -- someone who can drive rigorous engineering outcomes while delivering an exceptional customer experience

What You'll Do

• Escalation Operations
• Own the L2/L3 escalation boundary: define routing criteria, review escalation quality, and drive down unnecessary L3 load without increasing customer time-to-resolution
• Maintain and improve escalation intake workflows including triage standards, ticket hygiene, and handoff artifacts for engineering partners
• Track escalation health metrics and report on trends to engineering leadership; identify capacity risks in eng teams before they become bottlenecks
• Run escalation retrospectives to close the loop on resolution patterns and feed signal back into product and documentation
• Team Development
• Manage, coach, support and develop the AMER Technical Support Engineering team, with direct attention to technical depth and debugging rigor
• Operate career leveling frameworks for IC growth (L1 through L6); hold bar on promotions and ensure growth plans are actionable
• Coordinate AMER handoffs with APAC and EMEA peer managers to maintain follow-the-sun coverage quality: clear ownership at every handoff, with uninterrupted SLA performance
• Identify and close skill gaps proactively, particularly in Linux fundamentals, container security, and Kubernetes ecosystems
• Tooling and Automation
• Own the support tooling stack including ticketing systems, AI-assisted triage, and deflection tooling
• Partner with engineering to build and maintain LLM-assisted workflows for escalation intake, ticket quality review, and knowledge retrieval
• Drive adoption of AI tooling across the team; know where automation adds leverage and where it introduces risk
• Use support data to surface product quality signals and operational trends to engineering and product leadership
• Cross-Functional Execution
• Serve as the primary interface between Technical Support Engineering and product engineering teams for escalated issues
• Maintain a functional relationship with Customer Success and GTM without allowing those teams to define support quality standards or escalation criteria
• Contribute to product feedback loops through reproducible, well-scoped bug reports and actionable pattern analysis
• What We Are Looking For:
• 4+ years managing technical support engineers or software engineers in a production-facing environment
• Demonstrated ability to design and operate an escalation process: not just follow one
• Technical credibility in the Linux ecosystem; comfortable reading logs, understanding container runtimes, and engaging with engineering teams as an active peer
• Strong written communication; capable of writing clear escalation summaries, retrospective reports, and leadership-facing metrics briefs
• Track record of developing engineers through real feedback, structured growth plans, and calibrated performance conversations
• Comfort operating in a globally distributed support org with peer managers in other regions; strong handoff discipline

Nice To Have

• Experience with container security, DevSecOps tooling, Kubernetes, or open source software ecosystems
• Familiarity with Zendesk or similar ticketing platforms at an operational level (workflows, configuration, reporting)
• Exposure to AI-assisted support tooling, LLM-based triage, or knowledge retrieval systems
• How This Role Is Measured:
• Your success will be evaluated on outcomes that require both technical judgment and operational discipline:
• L3 escalation score (quality and completeness of escalations reaching engineering)
• Mean time to resolution on P0 and P1 tickets
• L2 deflection rate with explicit accounting for customer time-to-resolution, not raw deflection volume
• Engineer retention and growth within your team
• Coverage model reliability: no dropped handoffs, no SLA misses due to scheduling gaps
• Base Salary Range
• $140,000 — $165,000 USD
• About Us
• 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
• 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
• other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.
• By submitting your application, you acknowledge that Chainguard will process your personal data in accordance with Chainguard's Global Candidate Privacy Notice .
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