About The Company
GitHub is the world's leading AI-powered developer platform, serving a vibrant community of over 150 million developers worldwide. It is the premier destination for collaborative software development, hosting more than 420 million repositories, including a significant portion used by Fortune 100 companies. GitHub empowers developers to build, scale, and deliver secure software efficiently through a comprehensive suite of tools and features designed to foster collaboration, innovation, and high-quality code production. As a company committed to fostering an inclusive and innovative environment, GitHub continually pushes the boundaries of technology, supporting open-source projects, and integrating cutting-edge AI capabilities to enhance developer productivity. The organization champions a remote-first culture, offering flexible work arrangements, competitive compensation, and opportunities for continuous learning and growth.
About The Role
GitHub is seeking a highly experienced Principal Software Engineer to join the Developer Experience (DX) team. In this pivotal leadership role, you will be instrumental in shaping the future of our engineering organization by driving system architecture, mentoring engineering teams, and delivering innovative, high-performance solutions. This position requires a deep expertise in building scalable, reliable, and high-throughput systems, with a focus on optimizing performance at scale. You will work closely with cross-functional teams, including product managers, technical leads, and engineers across the globe, to enhance and scale our platforms, ensuring they remain secure, stable, and capable of supporting our rapidly growing customer base. As a technical leader, you will influence architectural decisions, promote best practices, and foster a culture of continuous improvement, developer empathy, and inclusive collaboration. Your role will also involve strategic planning, risk mitigation, and leveraging telemetry and performance metrics to inform product development and operational excellence. This is an opportunity to make a significant impact on the future of software development and to help millions of developers worldwide achieve their goals.
Qualifications
- 11+ years of experience in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline, with proven experience in maintaining and delivering production-grade software in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, Rust, or Python.
- OR an Associate's Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, or related fields with 10+ years of relevant experience.
- OR a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field with 9+ years of relevant experience.
- OR a Master's Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, or related fields with 7+ years of experience.
- OR a Doctorate in the relevant fields with 5+ years of experience.
- Proven enterprise experience in designing and optimizing high-throughput, distributed systems in production environments.
- Strong expertise in performance profiling, observability, telemetry, and system tuning, especially in Go or similar languages.
- Experience with cloud-native technologies, particularly AKS and Azure management services, is preferred.
- Excellent leadership, mentorship, and communication skills, with a track record of influencing engineering culture and driving cross-functional projects.
- Ability to solve complex technical challenges creatively and pragmatically, with a focus on scalable and secure solutions.
Responsibilities
- Lead and influence the design and architecture of complex systems, ensuring security, compliance, and optimal performance standards are met.
- Establish and promote best practices for testing, performance tuning, code quality, and maintainability across teams.
- Conduct technical reviews, providing guidance to ensure reliability, scalability, and alignment with product objectives.
- Collaborate with product managers and technical leads to define service requirements, incorporate feedback, and refine system designs.
- Lead proactive debugging efforts, utilizing advanced tools and methodologies to resolve issues efficiently across multiple teams.
- Optimize deployment processes and runtime performance to meet business goals, ensuring safe and reliable rollouts.
- Drive continuous improvement in development quality through tooling, automation, and knowledge sharing initiatives.
- Analyze telemetry data, performance metrics, and experimentation results to inform engineering decisions and product enhancements.
- Develop and implement strategies for identifying, assessing, and mitigating technical risks, including contingency planning.
- Shape the strategic technological vision, identifying opportunities for innovation and leading initiatives aligned with GitHub’s long-term goals.
Benefits
- Competitive base salary within the range of USD $145,600 to USD $386,400 per year.
- Opportunity to work remotely from anywhere within the United States.
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance plans.
- Generous paid time off and flexible work arrangements.
- Continuous learning and professional development opportunities.
- Participation in stock options and performance-based bonuses.
- Inclusive and diverse work environment that values innovation and collaboration.
Equal Opportunity
GitHub is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. We embrace applicants from all backgrounds and do not discriminate based on gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, religion, age, national origin, citizenship, disability, pregnancy status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.
