Staff Software Engineer, Copilot Agents at GitHub, Inc.

United States

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 As a Staff Software Engineer on the Copilot Agents team at GitHub, you will help shape the future of agentic software development. Working at the forefront of AI-powered coding, you’ll partner with engineers, researchers, and designers to deliver experiences that millions of developers rely on every day. The Copilot Agents team builds GitHub’s core platform for agentic development, including the Copilot CLI, SDK, and agent harness; Copilot Cloud Agents and Chat; Copilot Context services such as Memory and Semantic Search; and client experiences across Web, Mobile, and Desktop. In this role, you’ll work across these layers to unlock dramatic improvements in developer and organizational productivity through agentic capabilities spanning the software development lifecycle. You will design, build, and ship performant, reliable, and inspiring agent experiences—from issue-to-PR coding agents and asynchronous task execution to multi-step tool use, sandboxed execution, and integrated reviewer/agent collaboration loops. You’ll work across clients, services, and platforms to deliver cohesive, high-quality developer experiences, while helping expand GitHub’s platform to support the agentic SDLC. We’re looking for creative problem solvers who care deeply about both culture and customers. You bring experience building complex systems—ideally agentic or AI-powered—and a passion for developer tools and platforms. You thrive in ambiguity, work effectively across boundaries, and turn bold ideas into impactful products. We believe how we build matters as much as what we build. Shared purpose, curiosity, quality, and collaboration are what drive great outcomes—and great products reflect the teams behind them. 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. Build and use agentic tooling to accelerate your own and your team’s impact. 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. Collaborate with cross-functional teams and partner with stakeholders and lead discussions for technical solutions, including design and cost considerations. Maintain executional and operational excellence within and potentially across teams/organizations. Drive and support the technical roadmap for Copilot Agents that aligns with product goals, ensuring engineering efforts are strategically prioritized and incorporating the adoption of new model capabilities, agent frameworks, and methodologies as the AI landscape evolves. Architect and evolve agentic coding systems that orchestrates LLM tool use, planning loops, sandboxed code execution, and long-horizon task completion across GitHub repositories, issues, pull requests, and Actions. Champion responsible AI practices for autonomous coding agents, including prompt-injection defenses, permission scoping, audit logging, and human-in-the-loop review patterns that keep developers in control of changes Copilot makes on their behalf. Qualifications Required Qualifications: 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 Associate’s Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 8+ 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 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 Master'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 Doctorate in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 3+ 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 in one or more scripting languages (e.g., Bash, Python, or a similar language), technologies and software platforms (e.g., Ruby, React, Go, JavaScript/TypeScript, MySQL, CosmosDB, Elasticsearch), front-end frameworks (e.g., React.js), and/or telemetry dashboards (e.g., Datadog, Sentry, Azure Data Explorer). Experience with cloud environments and/or Cloud Native Compute Foundation (CNCF) concepts. Demonstrated experience with large-scale system architecture and design, particularly in cloud-based environments, with a strong understanding of distributed systems and microservices. Experience working closely with product management, design, and other engineering teams to drive cross-functional projects and deliver high-quality products. Hands-on experience building agentic systems – multi-step planning loops, tool use, retrieval-augmented generation, sandboxed code execution, or autonomous task completion – on top of frontier LLMs (e.g., Claude, GPT-4/5-class models). Experience with evaluation methodologies for non-deterministic AI systems, including offline benchmarks, online A/B experiments, and human-in-the-loop quality measurement. Familiarity with the GitHub developer platform – repositories, pull requests, Actions, Issues, and the GitHub REST/GraphQL APIs – and a passion for the developer experience. Awareness of AI safety and security concerns specific to coding agents, including prompt injection, sandbox escape, secret leakage, and supply-chain risk, with a track record of designing mitigations. Compensation Range The base salary range for this job is USD $140,400.00 - USD $372,300.00 /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!