Staff Software Engineer
GitHub
GitHub is the world’s leading platform for agentic software development — powered by Copilot to build, scale, and deliver secure software. Over 180 million developers, including more than 90% of the Fortune 100 companies, use GitHub to collaborate, and more than 77,000 organisations have adopted GitHub Copilot.
Locations
In this role you can work from Remote, United States
Overview
The Developer Experience (DX) organization is seeking a Staff Engineer to join the Build and Test team, part of the group responsible for the foundational systems that power GitHub's internal development workflows. DX focuses on improving how GitHub engineers build, test, and ship software across the company—operating at significant scale and complexity. Our work spans CI/CD platforms, developer tooling, virtualized infrastructure, and the paved paths that enable teams to move quickly while maintaining reliability and security.
The Build and Test team owns the core build and continuous integration systems used across GitHub. We provide the tooling, services, and operational support that allow engineers to deliver changes to production safely and efficiently. This includes running highly available, company-wide CI platforms; partnering closely with application and platform teams to improve reliability and performance; and continuously reducing friction in the developer workflow. The team plays a critical role in maintaining trust in GitHub's build and test infrastructure while balancing speed, scale, and stability.
GitHub's continued growth brings both opportunity and complexity. As a Staff Engineer in this role, you will work within a distributed team operating mission-critical systems in a fast-moving environment. You'll work closely with engineers across the company to improve CI reliability, reduce test flakiness, respond to incidents, and evolve our platforms to meet the needs of a rapidly scaling organization. This role blends technical leadership, deep engineering expertise, and operational ownership, with a direct impact on the daily experience of GitHub engineers and the quality of the products used by millions of developers worldwide.
Responsibilities
A day in the life:
Our team is distributed worldwide which means we work both asynchronously and real-time. Your typical week would include:
Collaborating with engineering teams, product management, customers, and engineering leadership to align on and understand the problems we want to solve
Driving technical solutions to GitHub's most critical problems, often unblocking others through design guidance and hands-on contribution, via real-time conversations in Slack or Zoom and with asynchronous communication in GitHub Issues, PRs, Discussions, and Projects
Communicating effectively to stakeholders and leadership on technical direction, progress, and risks
Partnering across the team and with stakeholders, building relationships, and identifying technical opportunities and areas of improvement
Driving good architectural design outcomes, secure and resilient systems, and quality code
Iteratively shipping features and bug fixes, balancing speed to market with future velocity
Mentoring engineers across the team and raising the technical bar through code review, design reviews, and pairing
Qualifications
Required Qualifications
- 9+ years 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, C++, C#, Java, Go, Ruby, Rust, or Python
- OR Associate’s Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 8+ years 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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, Rust, or Python
- OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field AND 7+ years 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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, Rust, or Python
- OR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 5+ years 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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, Rust, or Python
- OR Doctorate in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 3+ years 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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, Rust, or Python
- OR equivalent experience
- 5+ years of experience developing in Ruby or Go
Preferred Qualifications:
- 2+ years of experience working remotely as part of a distributed software engineering team
- 3+ years working with cloud technologies, Azure, AWS
- 3+ years of working with Terraform and Kubernetes
- Sstrong customer focus and data driven approach
- Excellent analytical skills and communication skills both verbal and written. (as a distributed team, we are extra mindful about communication)
- Effective communicator, be it when you write code, write emails, or explain complex technical issues to non-technical co-workers
Compensation Range
The base salary range for this job is USD $140,400.00 - USD $372,300.00 /Yr.
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 150 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!