Principal Software Engineer

About GitHub

As the global home for all developers, GitHub is the complete AI-powered developer platform to build, scale, and deliver secure software. Over 100 million people, including developers from 90 of the Fortune 100 companies, use GitHub to build amazing things together across 330+ million repositories. With all the collaborative features of GitHub, it has never been easier for individuals and teams to write faster, better code.

Locations

In this role you can work from Remote, United Kingdom

Overview

GitHub is revolutionizing the way developers collaborate and build software, and we are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to pioneer the UI Platform space, which entails areas of frontend performance, accessibility, consistency, and availability. This role is an opportunity to define GitHub’s future UI architecture, positioning GitHub as an industry leader in UI innovation. You will be responsible for empowering millions of developers worldwide by delivering exceptional and accessible user experiences.

Responsibilities

• • Lead UI Architecture at Scale: Own the architecture and development of GitHub’s Web UI platform, ensuring scalability, reliability, accessibility, and performance for millions of users worldwide.
  • Cross-Functional Leadership: Collaborate with cross-functional teams in engineering, product, and design to drive key frontend initiatives that optimize the user experience for our users, balancing frontend performance with complex backend APIs.
  • Mentorship and Technical Leadership: Provide technical mentorship to engineering teams, guiding best practices, establishing coding standards, and driving continuous improvement across the Web UI platform.
  • Architect for Scale, Performance and Accessibility: Champion accessibility and performance, ensuring GitHub’s frontend systems meet the highest standards and continue to perform at scale. Lead efforts to make the platform fast, accessible, and consistent across all products.
  • Balance Strategic and Hands-On Work: Drive architectural decision-making while remaining hands-on with coding and problem-solving where needed. Balance technical leadership with executing large-scale initiatives from concept to delivery.
  • Advocate for Platform Priorities: Drive the strategic vision for the Web UI platform by securing leadership support and resources, ensuring alignment with company-wide goals.
  • Build at Global Scale: Develop frontend solutions that power a platform supporting a large and distributed user base of millions of daily active users and billions of requests, ensuring GitHub’s frontend experiences remain fast, reliable, and accessible under high loads.

  What Success Looks Like in the First Year

  • Ramping Up and Understanding GitHub’s Systems: In the first few months, you’ll be expected to gain a deep understanding of GitHub’s systems, including the Web UI platform, backend services, and key dependencies. Success will come from applying this knowledge to drive informed decisions and impactful initiatives.
  • Leading Initiatives for Scalability: Deliver a robust UI platform that enhances the performance and accessibility of GitHub’s frontend systems, ensuring they scale effectively to meet the needs of millions of developers globally.
  • Driving Frontend Strategy: Collaborating with engineering, product, and design teams to create and execute strategic initiatives that drive the evolution of GitHub’s Web UI platform.
  • Mentoring Engineering Teams: Mentoring engineering teams to adopt best practices for scalable, high-performance frontend development, ensuring consistent delivery of high-quality solutions.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Many years of experience in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline, with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software in languages including, but not limited to, JavaScript, Go, or Ruby
  • OR Associate’s Degree in a related field (e.g., Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Math, Physics) and numerous years of experience in the same areas with proficiency in the listed languages.
  • OR Bachelor’s Degree in a related field and multiple years of experience with the same languages and technologies.
  • OR Master’s Degree in a related field and several years of experience with the same languages and technologies.
  • OR Doctorate in a related field and some years of experience with the same languages and technologies.
  • OR equivalent experience.
• Numerous years of experience in designing, building, and maintaining large-scale frontend applications and the backend systems that support these with an emphasis on performance, scalability, and maintainability at the scale of hundreds of millions of users
• Numerous years of providing technical leadership and mentorship, guiding teams to deliver software solutions, demonstrating timely execution of projects and initiatives.
• A few years of experience leading work implemented across multiple teams, frequently coordinating and collaborating with backend services, API teams, or infrastructure teams outside of your core area of responsibility.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience navigating how different concerns within the frontend engineering space overlap (e.g. accessibility, performance, UX consistency) and crafting execution strategies that successfully take these areas into consideration and lead to meaningful and impactful deliverables.
• Deep expertise and knowledge of the internals of React and related technologies
• Passionate and active in the evolution of current front-end architecture trends and best practices, encompassing performance, accessibility, security, and usability.
• Extensive experience with TypeScript and other statically typed languages, Node.js, the Web platform, and UI architecture
• Experience with large-scale codebases with contributors that span teams, offices and time zones
• Experience managing complex interactions between frontend and backend services
• Prior experience with Ruby on Rails or other backend technologies.
• Proficiency in using and customizing build tools and automation frameworks, such as Webpack.
• Prior experience articulating complex technical concepts to both technical (engineers at all levels) and non-technical (stakeholders and executives) audiences

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 100 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.

Equal Employment Opportunity

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!