Senior Software Engineer, Git Systems

About 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 Kingdom

Overview

GitHub is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join the Git Systems Engineering team, which runs the largest code-hosting platform in the world, part of our Platform and Infrastructure organization. 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 our git code-hosting platform. This role will be involved in the design, rollout and support of highly performant, highly scalable, and highly available services to enable the next generation of AI-driven software development.

 

Prior experience solving problems with large-scale, distributed systems is preferred. 

(i.e. Petabytes of storage, millions of objects, low latency, high throughput with millions of QPS) 

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, and ship high-quality solutions within the team’s service area, with attention to scalability, availability, and maintainability; build deep familiarity with the systems you own and apply best practices to keep code extensible and operable.

• Lead technical discussions for features in the team’s area of responsibility; produce design docs/proposals as needed; and validate approaches through targeted experiments and prototypes, incorporating stakeholder and customer feedback.

• Lead by example by writing clean, defensive, maintainable code and mentoring engineers within the immediate team on implementation details, debugging techniques, and product/service expertise.

• Provide technical leadership in code reviews to ensure changes meet GitHub and team quality standards (correctness, security, reliability, diagnosability, and maintainability), and that code is ready to merge and operate at the expected scale.

• Partner with engineering and product stakeholders to define requirements, identify dependencies, break work into deliverable milestones, and provide estimates and risk/impact tradeoffs to support prioritization and successful delivery.

• Participate in the on-call rotation for the team’s services; act as a first responder for your area of ownership; troubleshoot complex live-site issues using logs/telemetry; drive mitigations and safe deployments (including rollback plans); and write postmortems that result in measurable follow-up improvements.

• Model engineering excellence by improving developer workflows (tooling, automation, and repeatable quality checks), sharing learnings from investigations and incidents, and contributing to a collaborative team culture with strong ownership and inclusive communication.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications  

• 6+ 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 Associate’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 Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 4+ 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 2+ 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

  • OR equivalent experience.

 

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: 

• 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.

• Demonstrated experience with large-scale system architecture and design, particularly in cloud-based environments, with a strong understanding of distributed systems and microservices.

• Experience working closely with product management, design, and other engineering teams to drive cross-functional projects and deliver high-quality product.

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.

Equal Employment Opportunity

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!