Remote Support Engineering Manager - Chainguard USA — Columbus
Traveler-Friendly Insight
This role is explicitly remote-first, making it a strong fit for digital nomads based in the US — though there's an important caveat: the AMER timezone requirement is real. As the manager of the AMER Technical Support Engineering team in a follow-the-sun model, you'll need to maintain consistent overlap with US business hours (roughly PST to EST), which limits flexibility to about UTC-8 to UTC-5. Working from Medellín (UTC-5) or Mexico City (UTC-6) is quite feasible; Southeast Asia or Europe would create schedule conflicts.
Visa considerations: The role appears US-focused in hiring, so a US work authorization is likely required. Non-US citizens should clarify eligibility before applying. If you're US-based and want to travel, short-term stays in LATAM countries on tourist visas (e.g., Colombia's 90-day allowance, Mexico's 180-day permit) work well given the timezone alignment.
Salary vs. cost of living:
- Medellín, Colombia: $140K–$165K USD goes extremely far — monthly expenses ~$1,500–$2,000 for a comfortable lifestyle.
- Mexico City, Mexico: Monthly costs ~$2,000–$2,500; excellent infrastructure and coworking scene.
- Lisbon, Portugal: Timezone mismatch (UTC+1) makes this impractical for AMER support hours.
The monthly coworking stipend and bi-annual destination summits are standout nomad-friendly perks worth factoring into your decision.
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
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, which means you think about ticket routing, escalation criteria, handoff quality, and 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 engineering 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.
Benefits
- 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.
- Unlimited 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.
By submitting your application, you acknowledge that Chainguard will process your personal data in accordance with Chainguard's Global Candidate Privacy Notice.
©2026 Chainguard. All Rights Reserved.
Frequently Asked Questions
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