Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. GitHub is the world’s leading platform for agentic software development, and they are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to define and build the foundational systems for their Enterprise AI Platform. This role involves shaping how AI agents operate safely and consistently across various environments and influencing GitHub's AI platform strategy.
Responsibilities
- Define Enterprise AI Control Plane Architecture: Drive the technical direction for a unified AI control plane spanning models, agents, tools, MCP, permissions, spend, plugins, and client settings with a vision of policy authored once, enforced consistently everywhere
- Build Foundational Platform Primitives: Architect scalable policy engines, governance SDKs, client-side enforcement frameworks, and extensible schemas for agentic workflows
- Drive Cross-Client Consistency: Partner across Copilot CLI, IDE, agent, and platform teams to standardize policy enforcement through reusable APIs, contracts, and SDK patterns
- Solve Hard Distributed Systems Problems at Scale: Design reliable, scalable, secure, and resilient systems for policy evaluation, spend enforcement, permissions, auditability, and observability supporting millions of developers
- Influence GitHub’s AI Platform Strategy: Partner with engineering and product leaders to shape the long-term enterprise AI roadmap, technical direction and cross-organizational alignment
- Raise the Engineering Bar: Mentor senior engineers and elevate architectural rigor, systems thinking, and technical execution across teams
Skills
- 11+ 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 10+ 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 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 Master's Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, Computer Engineering, 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 PhD 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 equivalent experience
- Deep Distributed Systems Expertise: Deep experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems or platform infrastructure
- Platform & Systems Design: Strong expertise designing scalable systems across APIs, identity, policy engines, security, reliability, and infrastructure platforms
- AI / Platform Experience: Proven experience building platform infrastructure, developer platforms, AI systems, or large-scale technical platforms
- Cross-Organizational Technical Leadership: Demonstrated success driving architecture, platform adoption, and alignment across multiple teams
- Influence Without Authority: Strong track record of shaping technical direction and delivering outcomes across organizational boundaries
- Builder Mindset: Comfortable operating in ambiguity and fast-moving environments, creating clarity, and balancing long-term platform investments with pragmatic execution
- Preferred Experience: Background in AI/LLM systems, agentic platforms, developer tooling, governance systems, enterprise software, or cloud-native systems (Azure, Kubernetes, AKS) is a plus
Benefits
- Annual bonus and stock
- Opportunity to earn sales incentives based on revenue or utilization, depending on the terms of the plan and the employee's role
- Competitive pay
- Generous learning and growth opportunities
- Excellent benefits to support you, wherever you are
- Remote-first
Company Overview
GitHub is a software company that offers code hosting services that allow developers to build software for open-source and private projects. It is a sub-organization of Microsoft. It was founded in 2008, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA, with a workforce of 501-1000 employees. Its website is https://github.com.Company H1B Sponsorship
GitHub has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 3 in 2026, 26 in 2025, 17 in 2024, 14 in 2023, 20 in 2022, 20 in 2021, 10 in 2020. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role.