Principal Design Engineer

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.

Overview

As a Principal Design Engineer at GitHub, you’ll play a key role in shaping the future of GitHub’s product experience and in defining what design engineering leadership looks like across the company. You won’t just prototype ideas: you’ll help drive them into production systems that ship, scale, and delight users. You’ll work at the intersection of design, engineering, and product strategy, and you’ll be accountable for outcomes — from early concepts through shipping production-ready features. In this role, you’ll lead by example as an individual contributor, mentor design engineers, influence cross-team technical and design decisions, and partner closely with product, platform, and design leadership on long-term strategy. This is a leadership role without direct people-management responsibility, focused on technical impact, delivery excellence, and design leadership across GitHub.

Responsibilities

Product Vision & Strategy

• Define and communicate long-term technical and design vision for core experiences at GitHub.
• Partner with product and design leaders to set product strategy and roadmap priorities.
• Anticipate and influence needs across teams by identifying opportunities where design engineering can elevate the product and developer experience.

Execution & Delivery

• Own high-impact initiatives from concept through production delivery.
• Ship production-ready code that reflects strong design thinking, solid engineering, and attention to user needs.
• Lead technical design discussions, make architectural decisions, and guide cross-team implementation efforts.

Design Systems & Standards

• Advance GitHub’s design system by setting standards, creating reusable components, and driving consistency across products.
• Champion performance, accessibility (WCAG), and maintainability in UI engineering.
• Ensure design engineering work scales with GitHub’s growing suite of products.

Influence & Mentorship

• Mentor design engineers and cross-disciplinary partners on technical craft, execution practices, and user-centered thinking.
• Establish best practices for collaboration, code quality, review feedback, and shared ownership.
• Advocate clearly and effectively for design engineering priorities at the executive level.

Cross-Organization Collaboration

• Engage with teams across design, product, platform engineering, and research to align on goals and solutions.
• Shape cross-team processes that improve planning, predictability, and delivery outcomes.
• Represent design engineering in architectural and strategic discussions.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• 12+ years experience in product or service design OR Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, or related field AND 10+ years experience in product or service design OR Master's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, or related field AND 8+ years experience in product or service Design OR Doctorate in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, or related field AND 6+ years experience in product or service Design OR equivalent experience
• Experience shipping production-ready experiences.
• Hands-on experience with modern front-end technologies (e.g., React, CSS, HTML, JavaScript/TypeScript) and design systems.
• Experience in design engineering, front-end engineering, product design, or a related technical discipline.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience building AI and agentic experiences.
• Experience influencing technical and design choices across teams.
• Experience leading design systems initiatives or platform-level UI engineering.
• Background in mentoring and developing engineering and design talent.
• Experience advancing accessibility and performance best practices in shipped products.
• Excellent communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

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.

Equal Employment Opportunity

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!

Key skills/competency

• Design Engineering
• Product Strategy
• Front-end Technologies
• Design Systems
• Accessibility (WCAG)
• Performance Optimization
• Mentorship
• Cross-functional Collaboration
• Technical Leadership
• AI/Agentic Experiences