Staff Software Engineer, Compute Platform

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

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

The Compute Platform team owns and operates the Kubernetes-based platforms that run GitHub's production workloads. We are responsible for Hubbernetes, GitHub's internal Kubernetes platform, and for the platform engineering work needed as GitHub moves more production infrastructure to Azure Kubernetes Service. Our work spans cluster lifecycle, fleet reliability, capacity, workload guardrails, developer experience, and the operational foundations that service teams build on every day. 

As a Staff Software Engineer on Compute Platform, you will work with a distributed team to lead the technical direction of a Kubernetes platform that hundreds of internal teams depend on. You will design and implement systems that make GitHub's compute substrate easier to scale, safer to operate, and harder to misuse, with a focus on reliability, automation, operational clarity, and reducing toil. 

The Compute Platform team is highly distributed, and you will thrive in an environment of remote work and asynchronous communication. You should have strong written communication skills, strong software engineering fundamentals, and several years of hands-on experience building or operating Kubernetes and cloud-native platform systems in production. Azure and AKS experience are strong pluses. 

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate Kubernetes-based platform systems that support GitHub production services.

• Improve reliability, scalability, and operability across GitHub's Kubernetes / Hubbernetes fleet.

• Lead technical work across ambiguous, cross-team platform problems, including AKS migration, fleet management, control-plane reliability, and capacity management.

• Partner with service owners, infrastructure teams, and engineering leaders to define safe migration paths, operational standards, and long-term platform direction.

• Debug and resolve complex production issues across Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, Linux, containers, networking, observability, and distributed systems. Build automation and guardrails that improve workload quality, capacity efficiency, cluster lifecycle operations, and incident response.

• Mentor engineers and raise the engineering bar through design review, code review, technical direction, and operational judgment.

• Write, review, test, and maintain reliable platform software and automation. Go experience is helpful, but strong production software engineering fundamentals matter more than any single language.

• Participate in on-call and incident response for the systems owned by the team, including driving follow-up work that prevents repeat issues. 

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, 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 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. 
• 2+ years experience with large-scale Kubernetes fleet operations, cluster lifecycle management, capacity management, or workload migration. 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Azure Kubernetes Service or operating Kubernetes on Azure. 
• Experience with platform engineering, developer platforms, internal infrastructure products, or infrastructure-as-a-service style systems. 
• Experience with Kubernetes controllers, operators, CRDs, admission control, scheduling, autoscaling, service mesh, or multi-cluster networking. 
• Experience improving reliability through SLOs, observability, incident response, automation, and operational readiness practices. 
• Experience leading Staff-level technical projects with high ambiguity and broad organizational impact. 

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.

This position will be open for a minimum of 3 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

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!