Principal Systems Engineer, Database Infrastructure

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, United States
Overview

GitHub is looking for a Principal Systems Engineer to join our Database Infrastructure team. We're a team that focuses on ensuring the reliability and scalability of the database fleet that powers GitHub. The Database platform is home to hundreds of terabytes of data, serving over 20 million queries per second on average across our fleet. 

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for GitHub's database platform and drive multi-year architectural strategy across our self-managed and cloud-managed infrastructure 

• Be a subject matter expert on database internals, and database administration within GitHub 

• Partner closely with engineering teams across GitHub including application, platform, infrastructure, and security teams to align database roadmap with product needs, influence design decisions early, and build shared understanding of how our systems are best used. 

• Own replication topology and failover automation including design for primaries, replica tiers, promotion, cross-region replication, and zonal and regional failover, along with the tooling that makes all of it easy 

• Own the components our databases run on. Manage kernel tuning, storage configuration, and compute and disk SKU selection to meet throughput, latency, and durability targets 

• Lead capacity planning for the database fleet including instance sizing, reserved capacity strategy, and migrating to new VM and disk generations as they become available 

• Participate in an on-call rotation and respond to incidents as needed 

• Help shape how our fleet evolves onto Azure, and make near-term architectural decisions that keep that path open 

The team is highly distributed across geographies and time zones, and you will thrive in an environment of remote work and asynchronous communication  

Qualifications

Required Qualifications: 

• 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. 

Preferred Qualifications:

• 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. 

• Deep expertise with MySQL internals: InnoDB, GTID and semi-synchronous replication, replication lag and its root causes, connection pooling and query routing through a proxy tier, read-after-write consistency strategies such as session pinning or GTID-aware routing, and diagnosing performance problems under production load. 

• Experience with database sharding in production, including shard key selection, cross-shard query costs, and resharding strategy. 

• Strong experience writing production software in Go, Python, Ruby, or Rust, particularly for systems-level work such as agents, daemons, and operational CLI tooling. 

• Experience with Microsoft Azure, or equivalent experience on another major cloud provider such as AWS or Google Cloud, and familiarity with managed database offerings. 

• Experience leading large-scale database infrastructure migrations, including replication-based cutover, correctness verification, and rollback planning. Migrations onto Azure are especially relevant to this role. 

Compensation Range
The base salary range for this job is USD $160,200.00 - USD $425,000.00 /Yr.
These pay ranges are intended to cover roles based across the United States. An individual's base pay depends on various factors including geographical location and review of experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant. At GitHub certain roles are eligible for benefits and additional rewards, including annual bonus and stock. These rewards are allocated based on individual impact in role. In addition, certain roles also have the opportunity to earn sales incentives based on revenue or utilization, depending on the terms of the plan and the employee's role.
This position will be open for a minimum of 3 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

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 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.
EEO Statement
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!

• Set the technical direction for GitHub's database platform and drive multi-year architectural strategy across our self-managed and cloud-managed infrastructure 

• Be a subject matter expert on database internals, and database administration within GitHub 

• Partner closely with engineering teams across GitHub including application, platform, infrastructure, and security teams to align database roadmap with product needs, influence design decisions early, and build shared understanding of how our systems are best used. 

• Own replication topology and failover automation including design for primaries, replica tiers, promotion, cross-region replication, and zonal and regional failover, along with the tooling that makes all of it easy 

• Own the components our databases run on. Manage kernel tuning, storage configuration, and compute and disk SKU selection to meet throughput, latency, and durability targets 

• Lead capacity planning for the database fleet including instance sizing, reserved capacity strategy, and migrating to new VM and disk generations as they become available 

• Participate in an on-call rotation and respond to incidents as needed 

• Help shape how our fleet evolves onto Azure, and make near-term architectural decisions that keep that path open 

The team is highly distributed across geographies and time zones, and you will thrive in an environment of remote work and asynchronous communication  

Required Qualifications: 

• 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. 

Preferred Qualifications:

• 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. 

• Deep expertise with MySQL internals: InnoDB, GTID and semi-synchronous replication, replication lag and its root causes, connection pooling and query routing through a proxy tier, read-after-write consistency strategies such as session pinning or GTID-aware routing, and diagnosing performance problems under production load. 

• Experience with database sharding in production, including shard key selection, cross-shard query costs, and resharding strategy. 

• Strong experience writing production software in Go, Python, Ruby, or Rust, particularly for systems-level work such as agents, daemons, and operational CLI tooling. 

• Experience with Microsoft Azure, or equivalent experience on another major cloud provider such as AWS or Google Cloud, and familiarity with managed database offerings. 

• Experience leading large-scale database infrastructure migrations, including replication-based cutover, correctness verification, and rollback planning. Migrations onto Azure are especially relevant to this role.