Senior Software Engineer, Compute Platform

Responsibilities

Design, build, and operate Kubernetes-based platform systems to support GitHub's production services. Drive technical initiatives including fleet management, AKS migration, and capacity management while mentoring engineers.

Requirements

Requires 2-6 years of experience in software engineering depending on educational background, with specific expertise in Kubernetes fleet operations. Strong fundamentals in production software development and cloud-native systems are essential.

Skills

• Kubernetes
• Cloud-native platform systems
• Azure Kubernetes Service
• Software engineering
• Automation
• System design
• Reliability engineering
• Distributed systems
• Linux
• Containers
• Networking
• Observability
• Go
• Capacity management
• Incident response
• Platform engineering

Benefits

• Competitive pay
• Learning and growth opportunities

About this role

About GitHub

GitHub is the world’s leading platform for agentic software development — powered by Copilot to build, scale, and deliver secure software. Over 180 million developers, including more than 90% of the Fortune 100 companies, use GitHub to collaborate, and more than 77,000 organisations have adopted GitHub Copilot.

Locations

In this role you can work from Remote, Canada

Overview

GitHub is changing the way the world builds software, and we want you to help build this effort.
The Compute Platform team owns and operates the Kubernetes-based platforms that run GitHub's production workloads. We are responsible for Hubbernetes, GitHub's internal Kubernetes platform, and for the platform engineering work needed as GitHub moves more production infrastructure to Azure Kubernetes Service. Our work spans cluster lifecycle, fleet reliability, capacity, workload guardrails, developer experience, and the operational foundations that service teams build on every day.
As a Senior Software Engineer on Compute Platform, you will work with a distributed team to contribute to the technical direction of a Kubernetes platform that hundreds of internal teams depend on. You will design and implement systems that make GitHub's compute substrate easier to scale, safer to operate, and harder to misuse, with a focus on reliability, automation, operational clarity, and reducing toil.
The Compute Platform team is highly distributed, and you will thrive in an environment of remote work and asynchronous communication. You should have strong written communication skills, strong software engineering fundamentals, and several years of hands-on experience building or operating Kubernetes and cloud-native platform systems in production. Azure and AKS experience are strong pluses.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and operate Kubernetes-based platform systems that support GitHub production services.
Improve reliability, scalability, and operability across GitHub's Kubernetes / Hubbernetes fleet.
Drive significant technical work across ambiguous, cross-team platform problems, including AKS migration, fleet management, control-plane reliability, and capacity management.
Partner with service owners, infrastructure teams, and engineering leaders to shape safe migration paths, operational standards, and platform improvements.
Debug and resolve complex production issues across Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, Linux, containers, networking, observability, and distributed systems.
Build automation and guardrails that improve workload quality, capacity efficiency, cluster lifecycle operations, and incident response.
Mentor engineers and raise the engineering bar through design review, code review, technical direction, and operational judgment.
Write, review, test, and maintain reliable platform software and automation. Go experience is helpful, but strong production software engineering fundamentals matter more than any single language.
Participate in on-call and incident response for the systems owned by the team, including driving follow-up work that prevents repeat issues.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:
6+ 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 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 Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field AND 4+ 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 2+ 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
OR equivalent experience.
2+ years experience with large-scale Kubernetes fleet operations, cluster lifecycle management, capacity management, or workload migration.
Preferred Qualifications:
Experience with Azure Kubernetes Service or operating Kubernetes on Azure.
Experience with platform engineering, developer platforms, internal infrastructure products, or infrastructure-as-a-service style systems.
Experience with Kubernetes controllers, operators, CRDs, admission control, scheduling, autoscaling, service mesh, or multi-cluster networking.
Experience improving reliability through SLOs, observability, incident response, automation, and operational readiness practices.
Experience driving senior level technical projects with high ambiguity and cross team impact.
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 150 million developers and counting. We’re also home to the biggest open-source community on earth (and 99% of the world’s software...

About GitHub, Inc.

Software Development · 501-1,000 employees · headquartered in San Francisco, CA · founded 2008