Staff Software Engineer, Planning & Tracking

GitHub is a leading platform for agentic software development and collaborative software delivery. The Staff Software Engineer will provide technical leadership for the Planning and Tracking team, designing, implementing, and operating highly available backend services while addressing performance, reliability, scalability, and architectural challenges. The role will also guide technical investments, coordinate cross-team initiatives, and mentor engineers.

Responsibilities:

• Build experiences that millions of people love and use every day, helping them to be more productive, collaborate more effectively and achieve their goals
• Have a real impact, take on ownership of GitHub.com. Contribute to and improve our code base from day one
• Foster technical growth across the team by researching new approaches, sharing insights, and guiding their practical adoption
• Write architecture briefs and proposals, carry out code experiments, and build prototypes to learn how we can achieve planetary scale with our systems
• Work closely with engineering leadership to guide technical investment and implement technical roadmaps and priorities
• Coordinate with engineering and product leads to define, prioritize, and task projects that help us meet business objectives
• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, pairing opportunities, and code reviews to encourage the growth of others

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, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, Rust, or Python o 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
• • 4+ years building and supporting large, high-traffic applications at scale within platform/infrastructure domains, including cloud native workloads in Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud
• • 3+ years demonstrated experience leading cross-team technical initiatives — authoring architectural decision records, driving adoption across multiple engineering groups, and mentoring engineers
• • Experience designing, operating, and debugging large-scale distributed systems, with a proven ability to drive improvements in high availability, automation, observability, and overall system reliability
• • 5+ years of hands-on experience in modern web stacks (e.g. C#, Go, React, MySQL)
• • Builder Mindset: Comfortable operating in ambiguity and fast-moving environments, creating clarity, and balancing long-term platform investments with pragmatic execution
• • You have excellent analytical skills as well as communication skills both verbal and written. We're a distributed team so we're extra mindful about communication
• • You are a clear and effective communicator, be it when you write code, write emails, or explain complex technical issues to non-technical co-workers
• • You are passionate and self-motivated, with a demonstrated ability to work in a fast-paced environment