Staff Software Engineer - Agentic First

Sonatype is the software supply chain security company, providing the world’s best end-to-end software supply chain security solution. As an agentic-first Staff Software Engineer, you will lead the design and delivery of enterprise-grade capabilities within Nexus Repository Manager, setting technical direction and mentoring other engineers to secure software supply chains at scale.

Responsibilities:

• Drive the technical design of major agentic-first subsystems — service architecture, data models, and agent/tool integrations — by running long-running, multi-agent workflows across decomposition, orchestration, implementation, testing, and review
• Take major initiatives from ambiguous problem statements through technical design, multi-team execution, rollout, and long-term operability
• Spend your time on direction, review, and taste rather than line-by-line coding. Define the evals, harnesses, guardrails, and review rituals that let your team confidently ship code no human typed
• Set the bar for how Sonatype engineers work with agents. Shape internal playbooks, tooling, and rituals; train Senior engineers in the craft; and raise the ceiling on what's possible
• Own non-functional requirements for your area — performance, reliability, and security — with particular attention to software supply chain threats (malicious packages, dependency confusion, provenance, SBOM accuracy)
• Partner with Product, Security Research, UX, and Support leaders to translate ambiguous customer needs into concrete, shippable technical plans; conduct deep design reviews; and raise the quality bar through thoughtful mentorship

Requirements:

• 7+ years of professional software development experience
• Experience leading multi-quarter technical initiatives that span multiple teams or services
• Strong experience with Java
• Experience with Cloud (AWS / Azure / GCP)
• Experience with large-scale distributed systems, including performance tuning, data-intensive services, and production operability at scale
• Working knowledge of software supply chain security, including SBOM formats (CycloneDX, SPDX), SCA, SLSA provenance, Sigstore/cosign signing, vulnerability analysis (OSV, NVD), and common attack patterns against package ecosystems
• Hands-on experience designing, running, and scaling multi-agent systems
• Ability to define evals, test harnesses, observability, and review workflows
• Ability to make product decisions independently and drive scope, trade-offs, and sequencing
• Ability to drive the technical design of major agentic-first subsystems
• Ability to partner with Product, Security Research, UX, and Support leaders to translate ambiguous customer needs into concrete, shippable technical plans
• Ability to own non-functional requirements for performance, reliability, and security
• Ability to mentor Senior engineers
• Ability to shape internal playbooks, tooling, and rituals