Customer Support Manager

Chainguard is hiring a Customer Support Manager to lead the AMER Technical Support Engineering team in a globally distributed, follow-the-sun support organization. You'll own the L2/L3 escalation path, manage team development, and drive operational excellence in how technical issues move from customer report to engineering resolution. This is a remote role reporting to the Engineering organization.

About the Role

You will manage the AMER Technical Support Engineering team and serve as the operational bridge between L2 support and L3 engineering escalations. Your accountability spans escalation quality, team development, tooling strategy, and cross-functional partnerships. You'll operate the escalation system as an integrated whole—thinking through ticket routing, handoff quality, engineering capacity, and customer experience as interconnected concerns rather than isolated tasks.

Responsibilities

Escalation Operations

• Define and maintain the L2/L3 escalation boundary, including routing criteria, triage standards, and handoff documentation that enables engineering teams to move quickly
• Review escalation quality and work to reduce unnecessary L3 load without extending customer time-to-resolution
• Track escalation health metrics and capacity risk; report trends to engineering leadership to prevent bottlenecks
• Conduct escalation retrospectives to identify resolution patterns and feed insights back to product and documentation teams

Team Development

• Manage, coach, and develop the AMER Technical Support Engineering team with focus on technical depth and debugging discipline
• Operate career leveling frameworks (L1–L6) for individual contributors; maintain promotion standards and ensure growth plans are concrete and actionable
• Coordinate handoffs with APAC and EMEA peer managers to maintain continuous follow-the-sun coverage and SLA reliability
• Identify and address skill gaps proactively, particularly in Linux fundamentals, container security, and Kubernetes

Tooling and Automation

• Own the support tooling stack, including ticketing systems, AI-assisted triage, and deflection automation
• Partner with engineering to design and maintain LLM-assisted workflows for escalation intake, ticket quality review, and knowledge retrieval
• Drive team adoption of automation tooling while maintaining clear judgment about where it adds leverage versus 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
• Work functionally with Customer Success and GTM teams while independently maintaining escalation quality standards
• Contribute to product feedback through reproducible bug reports and pattern analysis

Requirements

• 4+ years managing technical support engineers or software engineers in a production-facing environment
• Demonstrated experience designing and operating an escalation process (not just executing an existing one)
• Technical credibility in Linux ecosystems; comfortable reading logs, understanding container runtimes, and engaging with engineering teams as a peer
• Strong written communication skills; capable of writing clear escalation summaries, retrospective reports, and leadership-facing metrics briefs
• Track record of developing engineers through structured feedback, growth plans, and calibrated performance conversations
• Experience operating in globally distributed teams with strong handoff discipline across regions

Nice to Have

• Experience with container security, DevSecOps tooling, Kubernetes, or open source software ecosystems
• Operational familiarity with Zendesk or similar ticketing platforms (workflows, configuration, reporting)
• Exposure to AI-assisted support tooling, LLM-based triage, or knowledge retrieval systems

How Success Is Measured

• Quality and completeness of escalations reaching engineering (L3 escalation score)
• Mean time to resolution on P0 and P1 tickets
• L2 deflection rate measured with attention to customer time-to-resolution, not raw deflection volume
• Engineer retention and growth within your team
• Coverage model reliability: consistent handoffs with no SLA misses due to scheduling gaps

Compensation and Benefits

Base Salary: $140,000–$165,000 USD

Benefits Include

• Remote-First Culture: Work remotely with team summits twice annually and monthly stipend for coworking, phone, and internet
• Equity: Stock options upon hire and promotion; 10-year exercise window and secondary offering participation
• Health Coverage: 100% covered premiums for health, vision, and dental insurance for you and dependents
• Flexible Time Off: Unlimited paid time off
• Parental Leave: 18 weeks paid for birthing parents, 12 weeks for non-birthing parents, flexible use through child's first year

About Chainguard

Chainguard delivers hardened, secure, production-ready builds of open source software. Our customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and industry leaders like Anduril, Canva, OpenAI, Snap Inc., and Snowflake. The company is venture-backed by leading investors including Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital.

Chainguard is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, protected veteran status, disability, genetic information, political views, or other legally protected characteristics. We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories consistent with applicable law.