Staff Software Engineer - Codespaces & Copilot Workspace Compute

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 Kingdom
Overview:

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. GitHub is changing the way the world builds software, and we want you to help! 

 

With Codespaces, we’re building and operating instant-on, remote, container-based cloud development environments. In this model, engineers work in cloud development environments — tailored for a specific project — where the overhead of launching a task-specific workbench is effectively zero. Work on a bug, review a change, or just try something out, all booted from a clean baseline ready for your commits. Not only does this accelerate engineers day to day coding, but now it is used across GitHub.com to iterate and validate on Copilot generated code.

 

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join this team and drive the continued evolution of Codespaces, shaping the future of cloud-based development for GitHub and its users. In this role you will play a critical role in shaping and implementing the future of the Codespaces product. You will work directly with developers and customers to help define the future of cloud development environments and AI experiences across GitHub.com. You will work with a strong team of developers to design and build a platform that is secure, reliable and most of all fun to develop on. Note, this Staff position is not only one where you get to design solutions, but one where you will have the opportunity to write/ship large amounts of code/features as part of the job.

Responsibilities:

• Work with the team to understand technical constraints, and develop, communicate, and track against realistic plans to consistently ship products, features, and bug fixes

• Coordinate with engineering and product leadership to define and prioritize projects that help us meet business objectives

• Ensure the team builds software that is architecturally consistent and of high quality to reliably meet customer needs

• Support a highly available service used by millions of users on a daily basis

• Help cultivate an environment where team members are empowered and demonstrate a strong sense of ownership and belonging

• Help ensure that individuals on the team are learning, growing and advancing in their respective careers

• Mentor, pair, and delegate work to encourage the professional and technical growth of your team and those around you

• Contribute as a leader and influencer for Codespaces and Copilot Workspace engineering

• Participate in on-call rotations with your team

• Offer and receive feedback to grow yourself and the team

Qualifications:

Required Qualifications: 

• Many years of experience in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical discipline with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software coding in languages including, but not limited to,  C#, Rust, Go, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Java, C, or C++ 

  • OR Associate’s Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND experience in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical discipline with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software coding in languages including, but not limited to,  C#, Rust, Go, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Java, C, or C++ 

  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field AND experience in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical discipline with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software coding in languages including, but not limited to,  C#, Rust, Go, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Java, C, or C++ 

  • OR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND experience in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical discipline with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software coding in languages including, but not limited to,  C#, Rust, Go, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Java, C, or C++. 

  • OR Doctorate in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND experience in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical discipline with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software coding in languages including, but not limited to,  C#, Rust, Go, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Java, C, or C++

  • OR equivalent experience

• A couple of years experience in technical leadership roles such as tech lead, team lead or equivalent

• A few years of experience with cloud environments and/or Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) concepts

Preferred Qualifications:

• A passion for fostering good engineering practices, tools, and processes, with a strong interest in mentoring and developing engineers
• Excellent analytical and communication skills, both verbal and written, with a focus on effective collaboration in a distributed team environment
• A strong customer focus and a data-driven approach to problem-solving and decision-making
• Proven experience in building, operating, and maintaining large-scale distributed systems, including incident response and participation in 24/7 on-call rotations
• Hands-on experience with container orchestration, virtualization, and service mesh technologies
• Expertise in large language model (LLM) technologies, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), prompt engineering, and online/offline evaluation methods
• Familiarity with Azure and its ecosystem of tools and services

GitHub Leadership Principles:

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!