Principal Software Engineering Manager

GitHub, Inc.; United States; On-site; USD 160,200 - 425,000; Full time

Job summary

GitHub, Inc. is seeking a Principal Engineering Manager to lead the Blackbird AI-powered code search engine within the Copilot Agents organization. You will drive the technical roadmap and collaborate with product leaders to scale globally.

You will grow and manage a team, own incidents and reliability, champion telemetry-driven development, and work with stakeholders to design production AI/ML features that impact millions of developers.

Qualifications

• 11+ years of software engineering with production systems.
• 5+ years people management experience.
• Experience with large-scale search or context retrieval is preferred.
• Experience integrating AI/ML features into production systems.

Responsibilities

• Drive and execute the technical roadmap aligned with product goals.
• Shape AI product portfolio and scale initiatives globally.
• Grow and develop the team, manage performance, keep skills current.
• Own incident response, reliability practices, and capacity planning.
• Champion telemetry-driven development and data-informed decisions.
• Collaborate with product managers and technical leads to gather requirements.

Skills

Languages: C/C++/Java

Leadership

Roadmap planning

Education

Bachelor's Degree in CS or related

Master's Degree in CS or related

Associate’s Degree in CS or related

PhD in CS or related

Equivalent experience

Job description

Overview

GitHub’s Blackbird is an AI-powered code search engine that powers context retrieval across the platform and Copilot products. As Principal Engineering Manager, you will lead the development of Blackbird within the Copilot Agents organization, drive innovation, and positively impact millions of developers worldwide.

Responsibilities

• Drive and execute the technical roadmap that aligns with product goals, ensuring engineering efforts are strategically prioritized and incorporate new technologies and methodologies where applicable.
• Work with organizational leaders to shape GitHub’s AI product portfolio, identify opportunities for innovation, and lead initiatives that scale globally.
• Drive employee growth and development, manage performance, and ensure the team’s skills remain current by staying abreast of industry developments and best practices.
• Own incident response and reliability practices, ensuring live services meet SLOs and postmortems drive systemic improvements; oversee capacity planning to ensure performance, reliability, and compliance.
• Champion experimentation and telemetry-driven development, enabling rapid iteration and data-informed decisions.
• Identify novel bottlenecks in AI-powered development workflows to improve team and organizational impact.
• Drive engineering excellence through automation, tooling, and standardization across deployment, testing, and operations; facilitate cross‑team communications, identify dependencies, and resolve conflicts to ensure seamless integration and support across products, applications, and services.
• Partner with stakeholders such as product managers and technical leads to determine requirements for services or complex scenarios, leveraging feedback channels to incorporate insights into future designs.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• 11+ years’ experience in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical discipline with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software 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, or related field AND 10+ years’ experience in Software Engineering with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software in the listed languages.
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field AND 9+ years’ experience in Software Engineering with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software in the listed languages.
  • OR Master’s Degree in Computer Science or related field AND 7+ years’ experience in Software Engineering with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software in the listed languages.
  • OR PhD in Computer Science or related field AND 5+ years’ experience in Software Engineering with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software in the listed languages.
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 5+ years people management experience.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience building or operating web‑scale search, information retrieval, or context retrieval systems.
• Expertise with systems programming languages—ideally Rust.
• Proven track record of building and scaling engineering organizations in high‑growth or ambiguous environments.
• Experience designing or integrating AI/ML‑powered features into production systems.

Compensation

The base salary range for this role is USD $160,200.00 – $425,000.00 per year. Benefits and additional rewards, including annual bonus and equity, are available based on individual impact and role responsibilities.

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. If you have a disability, please let us know if there's any way we can improve the interview process for you; we're happy to accommodate.