Staff Software Engineer, GitHub Actions

GitHub is the world’s leading platform for agentic software development, powered by Copilot and used by millions of developers and organizations worldwide. The Staff Software Engineer will architect, develop, and deliver reliable, high-performance infrastructure and services for GitHub Actions, while providing technical leadership across distributed teams and driving security, operational excellence, and technical strategy.

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

Requirements:

• • 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
• • 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