Staff Software Engineer, GitHub Actions

GitHub; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 372,000; Full time

Job summary

GitHub is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to architect and deliver high-performance systems powering developer collaboration at scale. You will drive design through production, leading distributed teams and shaping the technical roadmap for GitHub Actions and related services.

The role emphasizes security, reliability, and operating at massive scale, with responsibilities spanning API design, on-call ownership, and cross-functional collaboration.

Qualifications

• 9+ years' experience in software engineering with production systems.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test and ship high-quality technical solutions that scale across multiple services.
• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and code reviews to grow others.
• Own health and quality of systems, participate in on-call rotations.
• Design and implement APIs for seamless component integration.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams and stakeholders on technical solutions.
• Lead testing strategies, define success metrics and drive improvements.
• Champion security by isolating untrusted code and ensuring enterprise compliance.
• Improve reliability, monitoring, and runbooks across Actions services.
• Drive technical roadmap aligned with product goals and new technologies.

Skills

Distributed systems

Go

Ruby

Python

JavaScript

C/C++

Java

On-call experience

Security awareness

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Master's degree in CS or related field

Doctorate in CS or related field

Associate degree + 8+ years experience

Tools

CI/CD tooling

Container orchestration

API design

Job description

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 States

Overview

Role Overview:

GitHub is growing its Engineering team and seeks experienced professionals to elevate our software engineering efforts. As a Staff Software Engineer at GitHub, you will architect and deliver high-performance systems that power collaboration for millions of developers. You will drive technical execution from design through production, leading initiatives across distributed teams.

Within GitHub’s ecosystem, Actions powers automation for millions of developers worldwide, enabling them to build, test, and deploy code directly from their repositories. As the backbone of CI/CD workflows across GitHub, Actions processes billions of jobs monthly, from simple builds to complex deployment pipelines spanning multiple environments. Our team owns the core infrastructure and services that make this possible, ensuring reliability at a massive scale. We're a group of engineers passionate about developer productivity, tackling challenges in distributed systems, container orchestration, security, and cloud infrastructure. You'll work alongside talented colleagues who value collaboration, operational excellence, and building products that developers love.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test and ship high-quality technical solutions that scale across multiple GitHub services and become intimately familiar with the systems you build and take pride in writing maintainable code.
• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, pairing opportunities, and code reviews to encourage the growth of others; support teams in producing extensible and maintainable code, ensuring integration with downstream dependencies and adherence to quality standards.
• Own and advocate for the health and quality of the systems that the team builds, including participating in on-call for first responder rotations and live incidents.
• Design and implement APIs to facilitate seamless integration between software components.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams and partner with stakeholders and lead discussions for technical solutions, including design and cost considerations.
• Lead the team in developing comprehensive testing strategies, defining success metrics, and incorporating customer feedback to drive continuous improvement.
• Champion security across GitHub Actions by designing and implementing isolation mechanisms for untrusted code execution, ensuring compliance with enterprise security requirements, and partnering with Security teams to protect against vulnerabilities in our services.
• Champion operational excellence by improving system reliability, reducing incident response times, and establishing best practices for monitoring, alerting, and runbooks across Actions services.
• Drive and support technical roadmap that aligns with product goals, ensuring that engineering efforts are strategically prioritized and incorporating the adoption of new technologies and methodologies where applicable.

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, Go, Ruby, Rust, Python, JavaScript, C, C++, C#, Java,
• 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, Go, Ruby, Rust, Python, JavaScript, C, C++, C#, Java,
• 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, Go, Ruby, Rust, Python, JavaScript, C, C++, C#, Java,
• 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, Go, Ruby, Rust, Python, JavaScript, C, C++, C#, Java,
• 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, Go, Ruby, Rust, Python, JavaScript, C, C++, C#, Java,
• OR equivalent experience.

Willingness and ability to participate in a rotating on-call schedule, providing 24/7 coverage for 1–2 weeks each quarter.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 2+ year(s) technical leadership experience
• 3+ years' experience using general purpose programming languages (e.g., Go, Ruby, or a similar language)
• 3+ years' experience in one or more scripting languages (e.g., Bash, Python, or a similar language)
• Experience building or operating CI/CD systems at scale

Compensation Range

The base salary range for this job is USD $140,400.00 - USD $372,300.00 /Yr.