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# Principal Systems Engineer, Database Infrastructure

- **Company:** GitHub
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States (Remote available)
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** C (Programming Language), Java (Programming Language), JavaScript (Programming Language), Amazon Web Services, Systems Engineering, Microsoft Azure, C Sharp (Programming Language), C++ (Programming Language), Databases, Computer Engineering, Data Infrastructure, Shard (Database Architecture), Github, Python (Programming Language), MySQL, Ruby, Software Engineering, Rust (Programming Language), Google Cloud, Cloud Platform System, Information Technology, Asynchronous Programming, Golang
- **Published:** October 26, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.sanfranciscogigs.com/job.asp?id=3467492577&tx=FR6764FFI&pt=1&aff=0B19D771-A501-4A5E-8338-2A822B784D54&utm_source=Job%20Feed&utm_medium=textkernel&utm_campaign=DE&utm_term=0B19D771-A501-4A5E-8338-2A822B784D54

## About the Role

* 11+years experiencein Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical discipline with proven experiencemaintainingand delivering production software coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, Rust, or Python
 * ORAssociate's Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 10+years experiencein 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
 * ORBachelor's Degree in Computer Scienceor related field AND 9+years experiencein 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
 * ORMaster's Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Math, Physics, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 7+years experiencein 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 experiencein 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., * Excitement about building,operating, andmaintainingresilient, scalable systems thatimpacta 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 keyselection, cross-shard query costs, andreshardingstrategy.
 * 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 withMicrosoftAzure, or equivalent experience on another major cloud provider such as AWS or Google Cloud, and familiarity with managed database offerings.
 * Experience leading large-scale databaseinfrastructuremigrations, including replication-based cutover, correctness verification, and rollback planning. Migrations onto Azure are especially relevant to this role.

## Description

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., * Set the technical direction for GitHub'sdatabaseplatform and drive multi-year architectural strategy acrossour self-managed and cloud-managed infrastructure

 * Be a subject matter expert ondatabase 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 includingdesign forprimaries, replica tiers, promotion, cross-region replication, and zonal and regional failover, along with the tooling that makes all of it easy
 * Ownthecomponents our databases run on. Manage kernel tuning, storage configuration, and compute and disk SKU selection to meet throughput, latency, and durabilitytargets
 * 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 howour fleetevolves 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

## About GitHub

GitHub is **_where people build software_**. More than 150 million people use GitHub to discover, fork, and contribute to over 420 million projects.


**Tech Stack:** Ruby, Ruby on Rails
**Industries:** Enterprise Software, Platform

[Company profile](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/companies/3968-github)

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