Principal Software Engineer

About GitHub

As the global home for all developers, GitHub is the complete AI-powered developer platform to build, scale, and deliver secure software. Over 100 million people, including developers from 90 of the Fortune 100 companies, use GitHub to build amazing things together across 330+ million repositories. With all the collaborative features of GitHub, it has never been easier for individuals and teams to write faster, better code. **

Locations**

In this role you can work from Remote, United States **

Overview**

GitHub is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join the Git Systems Engineering team, which runs the largest code-hosting platform in the world, part of our Platform and Enterprise org. Our group is responsible for the services that store and serve Git repositories, both directly to users and to other layers in the GitHub software stack. We build the various microservices, protocols, proxies, and control systems that power Git operations at GitHub and operate them at scale.

Our group is highly distributed and the right candidate will thrive in an environment of asynchronous communication. We expect you to have excellent written communication skills and be able to create working relationships with coworkers in locations around the globe.

This role is focused on wide-reaching, cross-team work to improve GitHub’s engineering processes, systems, and architecture. Principal Software Engineers are focused on the most impactful work in Platform engineering and provide guidance to engineering leadership and the organization to help build, scale, and maintain GitHub as the home for all developers. **

Responsibilities**

• Drive department-wide conversations around technical issues and engineering practices, suggesting improvements and ideas as you see them
• Ensure the team builds software that is architecturally consistent and of high quality, establishing patterns and best practices for the organization
• Coordinate with engineering and product leads to define, prioritize, and task projects that help us meet business objectives
• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, pairing opportunities, and code reviews to encourage the growth of others
• Help cultivate an environment where team members are empowered and demonstrate a strong sense of ownership and belonging

A week in the life of a Principal Engineer might consist of:

• Collaborating with other Principal Engineers to define the future of GitHub engineering and working together to implement that vision
• Collaborating with design, analytics, support, and product management to understand the problems we want to solve and exploring how we can solve them
• Digging in to the most important issues the department is tackling by asking questions, creating plans, recognizing pitfalls, and raising concerns
• Discussing and collaboratively solving engineering and product problems with engineering collaborators in Slack or Zoom
• Supporting company-wide initiatives
• Bringing key plans and execution ideas to the management team
• Mentoring other engineers at all experience levels
• Responding to issues and review requests from other teams at GitHub
• Reviewing your teammates' Pull Requests and providing helpful feedback
• Serve as an engineering representative for critical customer conversations to discover what they love and what their pain points are
• Embedding in a squad periodically to enable others to tackle challenges and stretch assignments
• As a part of Engineering technical leadership, advising on key initiatives, gaps, and technical blind spots

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• 12+ years of experience designing, developing, shipping, and maintaining high quality software at scale
• 6+ years of technical engineering experience in Ruby, Go, or other modern programming language
• 6+ years of experience with troubleshooting across network, application, caching, queuing, load-balancing, storage and distributed services layers
• 6+ years of experience in one or more of the following domains: kernels, networking, compilers, software development tools, databases, HTTP, virtual machines, containers, security

Other Qualifications:

• Ability to meet GitHub, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft, GitHub’s parent company, Cloud Screen upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Prior experience migrating from data center to cloud infrastructure
• Experience designing large scale cloud services and distributed systems
• Experience with cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services
• Understanding of production system monitoring and observability
• Ability to think critically about both system design and software engineering concepts and blend those perspectives pragmatically based on project needs
• Excellent analytical skills as well as both verbal and written communication skills. We’re a distributed team so strong (asynchronous) communication is critical

Compensation Range

The base salary range for this job is USD $134,800.00 - USD $357,500.00 /Yr.

In addition, certain roles also have the opportunity to earn sales incentives based on revenue or utilization, depending on the terms of the plan and the employee's role.

These pay ranges are intended to cover roles based across the United States. An individual's base pay depends on various factors including geographical location and review of experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant. At GitHub certain roles are eligible for benefits and additional rewards, including annual bonus and stock. These rewards are allocated based on individual impact in role. In addition, certain roles also have the opportunity to earn sales incentives based on revenue or utilization, depending on the terms of the plan and the employee's role. **

GitHub values**

• Customer-obsessed
• Ship to learn
• Growth mindset
• Own the outcome
• Better together
• Diverse and inclusive

Manager fundamentals

• Model
• Coach
• Care

Leadership principles

• Create clarity
• Generate energy
• Deliver success

Who We Are

GitHub is the world’s leading AI-powered developer platform with 100 million developers and counting. We’re also home to the biggest open-source community on earth (and 99% of the world’s software has open-source code in its DNA). Many of the apps and programs you use every day are built on GitHub.

Our teams are dreamers, doers, and pioneers, leading the way in AI, driving humanitarian efforts around the globe, and even sending open source to Mars (and beyond!). At GitHub, our goal is to create the space you need to do your best work. We’re remote-first and offer competitive pay, generous learning and growth opportunities, and excellent benefits to support you, wherever you are—because we know that people flourish when they can work on their own terms.

Join us, and let’s change the world, together. **

EEO Statement**

GitHub is made up of people from a wide variety of backgrounds and lifestyles. We embrace diversity and invite applications from people of all walks of life. We don't discriminate against employees or applicants based on gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, religion, age, national origin, citizenship, disability, pregnancy status, veteran status, or any other differences. Also, if you have a disability, please let us know if there's any way we can make the interview process better for you; we're happy to accommodate!