Locations
In this role you can work from Remote, United Kingdom
Overview
GitHub is shaping the future of software development in the age of AI agents — and search is at the heart of it. As GitHub's lexical and semantic code search engine, Blackbird powers context retrieval for business‑critical experiences across the platform and our Copilot products, including Cloud Agent, Code Review, Copilot CLI, and VS Code.
We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help develop, scale, operate and extend Blackbird, including integrating with AI Agents and developing new AI‑powered software development workflows. You will be part of our Copilot Agents organization, positively impacting millions of software developers and AI agents worldwide who build everything from open source to global enterprises.
As a software engineer at GitHub, you will design, prototype, implement, ship and support highly performant and globally scalable code search technology with your team.
Responsibilities
- Design, develop, test and ship high‑quality technical solutions that scale across multiple GitHub services and become intimately familiar with the systems you build and take pride in writing maintainable code.
- Provide technical leadership, mentorship, pairing opportunities, and code reviews to encourage the growth of others; support teams in producing extensible and maintainable code, ensuring integration with downstream dependencies and adherence to quality standards.
- Help cultivate an environment where team members are empowered and demonstrate a strong sense of ownership and belonging.
- Own and advocate for the health and quality of the systems that the team builds, including participating in on‑call for first responder rotations and live incidents.
- Write architecture briefs and proposals and carry out code experiments.
- Design and implement APIs to facilitate seamless integration between software components.
- Maintain executional and operational excellence within and potentially across teams/organizations.
- Apply debugging tools and telemetry to verify assumptions, proactively resolve issues, and optimize code performance and maintainability.
- Drive and support technical roadmap that aligns with product goals, ensuring that engineering efforts are strategically prioritized and incorporating the adoption of new technologies and methodologies where applicable.
- Work with the team to understand technical constraints, and develop, communicate, and track against realistic plans to consistently ship products, features, and bug fixes.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
- 9+ years experience in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical discipline with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, Rust, or Python
- OR Associate’s Degree in a related field AND 8+ years experience in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical discipline with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software 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 7+ years experience in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical discipline with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, Rust, or Python
- OR Master’s Degree in a related field AND 5+ years experience in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical discipline with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, Rust, or Python
- OR Doctorate in a related field AND 3+ years experience in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical discipline with proven experience maintaining and delivering production software 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 web-scale search, information retrieval, or context retrieval systems.
- Expertise with systems programming languages — ideally Rust.
- Experience designing or integrating AI/ML‑powered features into production systems.
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!
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