Customer Support Manager

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 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 Tr