--- title: 'Head of Total Rewards at Chainguard' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-total-rewards-chainguard-united-states-4pwnnc6t2kq6' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-11-08' --- # Head of Total Rewards at Chainguard - **Company:** Chainguard - **Location:** United States - **Compensation:** $204k–$240k - **Work type:** remote - **Posted:** 2026-09-15 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-08 - **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/chainguard/jobs/4713282006 ## Job description 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. 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: We're looking for a Head of Total Rewards to own compensation and benefits strategy as Chainguard scales from a startup into its next phase of growth. This role will lead our Total Rewards team, managing our Compensation Manager and Benefits team, and will be responsible for setting the strategy that keeps us competitive as we compete for talent against some of the biggest names in tech. You'll partner closely with the business to build a total rewards approach that's both employee-first and cost-effective, while helping us extend our compensation and benefits programs into new countries as we expand internationally. This is a role with real ownership and runway. You'll shape how we think about pay, benefits, and rewards as the company roughly doubles in size over the next several years. What You'll Do: - Own and set Chainguard's total rewards strategy across compensation and benefits - Manage and develop the Total Rewards team - Lead our approach to global compensation and benefits strategy as we expand into new international markets, including the UK, Canada, and Germany, with more countries to follow - Partner with the business to balance employee experience with cost efficiency, identifying legacy programs or underutilized benefits that can be redesigned or retired without eroding our benefits-rich culture - Stay ahead of market trends in compensation and benefits, helping Chainguard remain competitive for talent against major players in the market - Oversee banding, market pricing, and merit cycles, in partnership with the Compensation Manager - Advise leadership on comp and benefits strategy tied to headcount growth and cost management as the company scales - Build scalable total rewards processes as the team and company grow What We're Looking For: - 8-10 years of progressive compensation and benefits experience, including 3+ years in a management capacity. - Proven experience setting total rewards strategy, with a strong background in either compensation or benefits (and working knowledge of the other) - Experience scaling total rewards programs at a high-growth SaaS or startup company, ideally through a growth stage comparable to scaling from roughly 1,000 to 3,000+ employees - End-to-end experience running compensation cycles — job architecture, market pricing, merit/promotion planning, and bonus design - Experience with equity program design and administration, including cap table fluency (Carta, Shareworks, or similar) - Strong command of market pricing and benchmarking tools (Radford, Pave, Mercer, or similar) - International experience required, particularly across EMEA; experience in Japan, Singapore, or South America is a strong plus - Experience partnering with or managing an Employer of Record (EOR) for international employees - Working knowledge of pay equity and compliance considerations across multi-state and international jurisdictions - Strong track record managing and developing a team - Comfort operating with some ambiguity and building process where it doesn't yet exist - Relevant experience is valued over certifications - This is a people-manager role reporting into the VP overseeing People Why This Role: Chainguard is scaling quickly, both domestically and internationally, and our total rewards strategy needs to scale with it. This role sits at the center of that work — helping us stay a benefits-rich, employee-first company while making smart, sustainable decisions about where and how we invest. You'll have the opportunity to shape compensation and benefits strategy across a rapidly growing, increasingly global organization, with real support to build the team and programs needed to get there. Base Salary Range $204,000—$240,000 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, 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](https://www.chainguard.dev/legal/candidate-privacy-notice). ©2026 Chainguard. All Rights Reserved. ## About Chainguard ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Chainguard delivers hardened, secure-by-default open source software artifacts (containers, libraries, VMs, packages) to eliminate software supply chain risk for enterprises building with AI. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series D) - **Headquarters**: Kirkland, Washington, United States - **Founded**: 2021 - **Founders**: Dan Lorenc, Ville Aikas, Matt Moore ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Computer and Network Security (Software Supply Chain Security) - **Target customers**: B2B — Enterprise engineering and security teams at Fortune 500 companies and high-growth tech firms (clients include OpenAI, Canva, Snowflake, Anduril, Snap Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet) - **Mission or purpose**: To be the trusted source for open source, so engineering teams can build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk. ## Products & Services - **Chainguard Containers**: Minimal, hardened container images with a best-in-class SLA for CVE remediation. Average 97.6% reduction in attack surface per image. - **Chainguard Libraries**: A guarded catalog of open source libraries that protect against supply chain attacks. - **Chainguard OS Packages**: Secure, rebuilt-from-source operating system packages. - **Chainguard VMs**: Optimized virtual machine images rebuilt from source daily. - **Chainguard Actions**: Secure-by-default CI/CD workflows for safer pipelines. - **Chainguard Agent Skills**: A continuously maintained catalog of hardened AI agent skills. - **Chainguard Factory**: An agentic software factory (SLSA L3-compliant) that builds all artifacts from source, ensuring every line is verified, hardened, and traceable. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed. Total funding of **$892M**. - **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue of **$15.1M** (estimated) / Total Funding **$892M** - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Amplify Partners, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, IVP, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Spark Capital, Mantis VC, General Catalyst. - **Growth Signals**: - Headcount: **569 employees** (+59% YoY), operating in 18 countries. - Metrics: 424,000+ CVEs remediated, 106,000+ engineering hours saved, 520K+ images and 2.5M+ library versions managed. - Recognitions: Fortune Best Workplaces in Technology, Fortune Best Workplaces for Women, Great Place to Work Certified, Forbes Cloud 100, Fast Company Most Innovative Companies 2026, Fortune Cyber 60, RepVue Top Overall Sales Orgs. ## Competitive Advantages - **Pioneer of "secure-by-default" open source**: Unlike traditional scanners that find vulnerabilities later, Chainguard builds artifacts from source with a hardened, minimal footprint from the start. - **AI-native security stack**: Specifically designed to secure the AI software development lifecycle (SDLC), protecting against AI-assisted attacks on the supply chain. - **Founding team credibility**: Creators and core contributors to foundational open source projects like Kubernetes, Sigstore, Distroless, and DriftlessAF. - **Industry-leading SLSA L3 compliance**: Ensures every artifact is verifiably traced and built without tampering. ## Strategic Focus - **Secure-by-default AI SDLC**: Hardening every layer of the stack that AI agents and developers use to ship code. - **Simplifying continuous compliance**: Helping enterprises meet regulatory requirements (e.g., SBOMs, FedRAMP) without slowing engineering velocity. - **Global expansion**: Building sales and engineering teams across the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Australia, and India. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: "Serious about our mission, playful about everything else." Values include customer obsession, bias for intentional action, and assuming good intentions. Described as a high-performing, collaborative, and fun team. - **Remote policy**: Fully remote-first — 500+ employees across 18 countries. Monthly coworking stipend, team meetup opportunities, and bi-annual destination summits. - **Perks & benefits**: - 100% covered health, vision, and dental insurance (for employee + dependents) - 18 weeks paid parental leave (12 weeks bonding + 6 weeks recovery for birthing parents) - $18,000 family planning support (adoption, IVF, egg freezing, surrogacy) - $1,750 home office setup budget - $300 monthly wellness stipend - $1,500 annual professional development budget - Flexible time off - **10-year stock option exercise window** — a standout perk in the industry - **Engineering culture**: Builds deep infrastructure (containers, VMs, libraries, SBOMs) and ships open source. Founders and many engineers are renowned OSS contributors. ## Sources 1. [Chainguard Homepage](https://www.chainguard.dev/) 2. [Chainguard Careers](https://www.chainguard.dev/careers) 3. [Chainguard About Page](https://www.chainguard.dev/about-us) 4. [Chainguard LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/chainguard-dev) 5. [Chainguard Job Board (Greenhouse)](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/chainguard) ## Other roles at Chainguard - [Business Development Representative - UK](https://feeny.ai/job/business-development-representative-uk-chainguard-united-kingdom-2277vvfzsc2j) — United Kingdom - [Staff Software Engineer, Chainguard Harness](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-chainguard-harness-chainguard-united-states-tyb1fazt8zj6) — United States - [Staff Revenue Operations Manager - EMEA](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-revenue-operations-manager-emea-chainguard-united-kingdom-qxm4zhtyjp4x) — United Kingdom - [Corporate Account Executive - California](https://feeny.ai/job/corporate-account-executive-california-chainguard-united-states-7jre85zw6e30) — United States - [Senior Software Engineer, Containers](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-containers-chainguard-canada-germany-united-kingdom-4pw9b462skxc) — Canada / Germany / United Kingdom / United States - [Partner Manager, Nordics & Benelux](https://feeny.ai/job/partner-manager-nordics-benelux-chainguard-denmark-netherlands-norway-sweden-48jch8t19cbe) — Denmark / Netherlands / Norway / Sweden - [Partner Manager, UK](https://feeny.ai/job/partner-manager-uk-chainguard-united-kingdom-8c29bptcbkgx) — United Kingdom - [Manager, Customer Success Management - Public Sector](https://feeny.ai/job/manager-customer-success-management-public-sector-chainguard-united-states-g454w0f3581r) — United States - [Security Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/security-engineer-chainguard-united-states-mc3p93bw33d6) — United States - [Senior Growth Operations Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-growth-operations-manager-chainguard-united-states-c286tfh151pm) — United States