Principal Platform Software Engineer

Responsibilities

• Lead cross-team evolution of middleware patterns or runtimes to standardize interoperability at scale.
• Define and enforce versioning, deprecation, and rollout strategies that minimize downstream breaks.
• Drive shared observability baselines (SLOs, error budgets) and resilience patterns across several services.
• Design, code, test, optimize, and support software that has real operational impact.
• Build and operate the GitHub Enterprise platform at scale.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to understand customer issues and align solutions.
• Provide advanced technical guidance and support to customers regarding customer-reported issues.
• Identify and implement customer issue and/or defect handling and training processes.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex and broad-reaching/scoped maintenance issues to ensure customer agreement on short- and long-term solutions.
• Implement complex secure coding practices to prevent security vulnerabilities.
• Perform periodic maintenance and testing operations for systems that require upgrading or patching.
• Manage and coordinate moderately complex tasks, monitoring timelines and deliverables to ensure timely completion and adherence to requirements for a moderately sized project or initiative.
• Collaborate across the organization to align on expectations and achieve shared objectives.
• Proactively escalate unresolved or critical issues with a thorough assessment and suggest potential solutions.
• Develop ideas, recommend updates, and collaborate on the implementation of process improvements to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of processes, protocols, and workflows across teams.

Qualifications

• Experience building production services, troubleshooting complex systems, improving reliability, and reducing toil through automation.
• Comfortable working across code, APIs, logs, metrics, incidents, customer issues, and long-term platform improvements.
• Advanced knowledge of software development lifecycle, including design specifications, accessibility, and document development.
• Knowledge of software system structural design, including performance optimization and scalability strategies.
• Ability to conduct debugging and troubleshooting to identify and fix complex software issues.
• Experience with complex API versioning, lifecycle, and interoperability strategies.
• Collaboration with stakeholders to understand customer issues and align solutions.
• Experience with security and compliance practices, including secure coding practices to prevent security vulnerabilities.
• Experience with system maintenance, including periodic maintenance and testing operations for systems that require upgrading or patching.
• Experience managing and coordinating moderately complex tasks, monitoring timelines and deliverables to ensure timely completion and adherence to requirements for a moderately sized project or initiative.
• Collaboration across the organization to align on expectations and achieve shared objectives.
• Proactive escalation of unresolved or critical issues with a thorough assessment and suggesting potential solutions.
• Development of ideas, recommendations for updates, and collaboration on the implementation of process improvements to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of processes, protocols, and workflows across teams.