[Remote] Principal Software Engineer, Database Infrastructure

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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, seeking a Principal Software Engineer for their Database Infrastructure team. The role focuses on ensuring the reliability and scalability of databases that support GitHub's extensive operations, involving design, development, and maintenance of database systems and tooling.


Responsibilities

  • Design and build a core part of GitHub’s infrastructure, work to scale our database solution
  • Be a subject matter expert on MySQL and database administration within GitHub
  • Cultivate open source projects developed at GitHub and build things you are proud to share
  • Design, develop and maintain tooling for operating database systems and self-service tooling for GitHub developers
  • Write technical documentation on how to use internal tooling and best practices for leveraging MySQL
  • Escalate risks and advocate for the health and quality of the systems that the team builds
  • Participate in an on-call rotation and respond to incidents as needed
  • Develop and design plans for disaster recovery and systems failovers
  • The team is highly distributed across geographies and timezones, and you will thrive in an environment of remote work and asynchronous communication

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 Doctorate 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
  • 3+ years experience in using monitoring tooling to diagnose performance or availability issues
  • Excitement about building, operating, and maintaining resilient, scalable systems that impact a global community of users with the ability to break down complex systems into manageable components
  • Drive for observability to understand performance and be able to diagnose problems
  • Effective communication skills and willingness to pair on problems, brainstorm in public, and enthusiastically engage with your teammates in group problem solving
  • Experience writing design docs and getting consensus on technical decisions from a broader group
  • Familiarity with database internals and experience with change management (especially database migrations)

Benefits

  • Annual bonus
  • 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

  • Company H1B Sponsorship

  • GitHub has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 4 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.

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