Principal Software Engineer, Identity & AI Governance

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 seeking a Principal Software Engineer to shape the future of identity and enterprise AI governance across its platform. Identity is a critical foundation for GitHub’s agentic AI ecosystem, enabling secure interactions between users, applications, and AI agents. As AI adoption scales, systems must support trust, authorization, delegation, and policy enforcement at a global scale. In this role, you will lead the architecture of Tier-0 identity and governance services powering authentication, authorization, and policy enforcement for GitHub’s ecosystem. These systems must operate with the highest standards of security, reliability, and scalability, serving billions of requests daily. You will partner across Security, Platform, AI, and Product teams to define strategy, drive architecture, and build the identity and governance control plane for GitHub’s AI-powered future. Responsibilities Lead and influence design discussions for the overall system architecture of complex products and solutions, ensuring they meet security and compliance requirements. Establish and mentor others in best practices for testing and assuring the quality of solutions, defining success metrics, and producing maintainable code integrated with downstream dependencies. Provide technical leadership during code reviews to ensure solutions meet quality standards, are reliable, and are appropriate for the scale of the product feature. Partner with stakeholders such as project managers and technical leads to determine requirements for services or complex scenarios, leveraging feedback channels to incorporate insights into future designs. Act as an expert on debugging tools and methods, leading proactive and reactive code development to verify assumptions and resolve issues across products and teams. Optimize deployments across products to meet business objectives, ensuring solutions are deployed safely and adhere to GitHub's deployment standards. Lead efforts to improve development quality and team performance by driving the execution of strategies for developer tooling and automation, sharing best practices, and mentoring others in new tools and strategies. Lead the refinement of products through complex data analytics, making informed decisions to enhance engineering products and integrate data-driven insights into the development process. Develop and implement strategies for identifying and mitigating technical risks across projects and products. This includes establishing frameworks for assessing potential risks and creating contingency plans to address them proactively. 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 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. Preferred Qualifications: Experience building or operating enterprise AI governance platforms, including policy systems, compliance frameworks, and control planes Experience designing and implementing identity systems such as authentication services, authorization frameworks, and identity federation Familiarity with identity protocols such as OAuth, OIDC, SAML, and SCIM Experience with agentic or AI-driven architectures, including systems involving models, agents, or AI APIs Strong understanding of enterprise security, compliance, and risk management requirements Experience operating cloud-native systems in environments such as Azure, Kubernetes, or AKS 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. 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! Lead and influence design discussions for the overall system architecture of complex products and solutions, ensuring they meet security and compliance requirements. Establish and mentor others in best practices for testing and assuring the quality of solutions, defining success metrics, and producing maintainable code integrated with downstream dependencies. Provide technical leadership during code reviews to ensure solutions meet quality standards, are reliable, and are appropriate for the scale of the product feature. Partner with stakeholders such as project managers and technical leads to determine requirements for services or complex scenarios, leveraging feedback channels to incorporate insights into future designs. Act as an expert on debugging tools and methods, leading proactive and reactive code development to verify assumptions and resolve issues across products and teams. Optimize deployments across products to meet business objectives, ensuring solutions are deployed safely and adhere to GitHub's deployment standards. Lead efforts to improve development quality and team performance by driving the execution of strategies for developer tooling and automation, sharing best practices, and mentoring others in new tools and strategies. Lead the refinement of products through complex data analytics, making informed decisions to enhance engineering products and integrate data-driven insights into the development process. Develop and implement strategies for identifying and mitigating technical risks across projects and products. This includes establishing frameworks for assessing potential risks and creating contingency plans to address them proactively. 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 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. Preferred Qualifications: Experience building or operating enterprise AI governance platforms, including policy systems, compliance frameworks, and control planes Experience designing and implementing identity systems such as authentication services, authorization frameworks, and identity federation Familiarity with identity protocols such as OAuth, OIDC, SAML, and SCIM Experience with agentic or AI-driven architectures, including systems involving models, agents, or AI APIs Strong understanding of enterprise security, compliance, and risk management requirements Experience operating cloud-native systems in environments such as Azure, Kubernetes, or AKS