Senior Software Engineer, Identity Platform

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’s Identity organization powers how developers and enterprises securely use GitHub. We’re responsible for authentication and authorization to apps and integrations. We build the core services that enable every user, team, and enterprise to access GitHub reliably, securely, and at scale. Our systems run at global scale and our mission is to make identity seamless and trustworthy for the next billion users.

We are looking for an experienced engineer to join GitHub’s Identity organization. This role is ideal for someone with deep expertise in identity and access management who can help shape the technical direction of GitHub’s identity platform.

Beyond building highly available distributed systems, you’ll bring industry perspectives to help evaluate emerging standards, guide architectural decisions, and identify opportunities that strengthen GitHub’s long-term identity strategy.

While the role includes hands-on backend development in Go and Ruby and front-end integrations, success in this role comes from combining strong engineering fundamentals with deep domain knowledge across modern identity systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement backend services in Go (Golang) that power authentication, authorization, and GitHub Apps at global scale
• Partner across engineering and product teams to solve complex identity challenges spanning user authentication, enterprise identity, applications, APIs, and machine identities.
• Evaluate emerging identity technologies, protocols, and security patterns, identifying where they can improve GitHub's platform.
• Design highly available, globally distributed services with a focus on security, resilience, and operational excellence.
• Mentor engineers by sharing identity best practices and helping raise technical depth across the organization.
• Participate in on-call rotations and continuously improve the reliability and operability of identity services.

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, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, Computer Engineering, 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.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Deep experience with modern identity standards such as OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect (OIDC), SAML, SCIM, WebAuthn/Passkeys, FIDO2, SSH, JWT, DPoP, and related technologies.
• Experience building identity infrastructure for enterprise, cloud, or developer platforms serving millions of users or high request volumes.
• Strong understanding of Zero Trust architectures, workload identities, machine-to-machine authentication, and credential lifecycle management.
• Experience evaluating and adopting emerging identity technologies and security standards.
• Ability to influence technical strategy through architecture, RFCs, mentoring, and cross-organizational collaboration.
• Experience contributing to or participating in identity standards bodies, open source identity projects, or developer ecosystems is a plus.

Compensation Range

The base salary range for this job is USD $124,000.00 - USD $329,200.00 /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!