Staff Software Engineer

GitHub Actions is the backbone of CI/CD across GitHub, processing billions of jobs monthly for millions of developers worldwide. As a Staff Software Engineer within the GitHub Actions team, you will architect and deliver high-performance systems that power this automation platform, driving technical execution from design through production and leading initiatives across distributed teams working on distributed systems, container orchestration, security, and cloud infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, and ship high-quality technical solutions that scale across multiple GitHub services.
• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, pairing, and code reviews; ensure integration with downstream dependencies and adherence to quality standards.
• Own and advocate for the health and quality of the team's systems, including on-call first responder rotations and live incidents.
• Design and implement APIs to facilitate seamless integration between software components.
• Champion security by designing and implementing isolation mechanisms for untrusted code execution and ensuring compliance with enterprise security requirements.
• Champion operational excellence through better system reliability, faster incident response, and strong monitoring, alerting, and runbook practices across Actions services.
• Lead the team in developing testing strategies, defining success metrics, and incorporating customer feedback.
• Drive a technical roadmap that aligns with product goals and strategic priorities.

Qualifications

• 9+ years of software engineering experience delivering production software in languages such as Go, Ruby, Rust, Python, C#, or Java.
• Preferred: technical leadership experience on production systems at scale.
• Preferred: experience with general purpose languages such as Go or Ruby and scripting languages such as Bash or Python.
• Preferred: experience building or operating CI/CD systems at scale.