Thomas Dohmke was the Chief Executive Officer of GitHub Inc. from November 2021 until he announced his departure at the end of 2025. He was a visionary leader who loved software development. During his time at GitHub, the world’s best platform for version control and collaborative software development, he led the company to the front of the pack in integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into coding. Dohmke’s leadership had a lasting effect on GitHub and the tech ecosystem as a whole. He was dedicated to empowering developers and had a career based on innovation.
Early Life and Starting a Career
Thomas Dohmke grew up in Germany and became interested in software development when he was a child. He took a very serious academic route, getting a degree in Technische Informatik (a mix of software and hardware systems design) from Technische Universität Berlin in 1998 and then a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Glasgow in the UK. He worked as a systems engineer at Mercedes-Benz early in his career, but it was his drive to start his own business that helped him succeed in the future.
Dohmke helped start HockeyApp, a platform for mobile app analytics and crash reporting. Microsoft bought it in 2014. This purchase put him in the Microsoft ecosystem, where he started out making tools for mobile developers. His job got a lot bigger when he helped Microsoft buy GitHub for $7.5 billion in 2018. He worked with then-CEO Nat Friedman to make sure the two companies worked well together.
Become CEO and lead GitHub
Dohmke started at GitHub as Chief Product Officer, where he was in charge of product strategy, management, and developer relations. He was a natural choice to take over as CEO from Nat Friedman in November 2021 because he knew a lot about what developers needed and was very good at technology. GitHub became the world’s largest code-hosting platform under his leadership, with over 150 million developers and more than 1 billion repositories and forks by 2025.
Dohmke’s time at the company was marked by a bold move into AI-powered development, especially with GitHub Copilot. Microsoft and OpenAI worked together to launch Copilot, which changed the way software is made by using models like GPT-3 and later GPT-5 to help developers write code, review pull requests, and automate boring tasks. By 2025, Copilot had grown to serve over 20 million users, which helped GitHub’s revenue grow by 40–45% and reach a $2 billion annual revenue run rate. Dohmke’s vision went beyond Copilot to include new tools like Copilot Workspace and GitHub Models, which made AI even more a part of the developer workflow.
GitHub reached important goals while he was in charge:
Dohmke oversaw GitHub’s growth into the EU and Australia, as well as getting U.S. FedRAMP certification for federal use. This made the platform easier for government agencies to use.
AI-Driven Growth: The number of AI projects on GitHub doubled in just one year, showing how important the site is to the AI revolution.
Improvements in security and productivity: GitHub Advanced Security cut the time it took to fix vulnerabilities by 60%, and GitHub Actions became the world’s best CI/CD solution, handling 3 billion minutes of work each month.
Cultural Change: GitHub did well under Dohmke’s leadership because it was a remote-first company that encouraged innovation and developer happiness.
Dohmke was very clear about his beliefs: AI is not a threat, but a partner. He told developers to use AI tools like Copilot to work on higher-level problems and system design. He thought that 90% of code could be written by AI in 2 to 5 years. His TED talk in 2024 and appearances at events like Africa Tech Festival stressed his goal of making coding available to everyone, with the goal of having 1 billion developers around the world by 2030.
Resignation and New Businesses
Dohmke said on August 11, 2025, that he would step down as GitHub’s CEO by the end of the year. He said that his “startup roots” were the main reason he wanted to start new businesses. He wrote in a blog post, “I’m leaving GitHub after almost four years as CEO to start my own company again.” It’s been the best ride of my life. He said he was proud of what GitHub had done, pointing out that it had over 150 million developers and a thriving AI ecosystem.
Microsoft chose not to find a new CEO after Dohmke left. Instead, it brought GitHub more closely into its CoreAI division, which is led by former Meta executive Jay Parikh. Microsoft executives like Julia Liuson and Asha Sharma are now in charge of GitHub’s leadership team, which includes Chief Product Officer Mario Rodriguez and Chief Revenue Officer Elizabeth Pemmerl. This reorganization shows how important GitHub is becoming to Microsoft’s AI strategy, especially when it comes to getting developers to use Windows, Azure, and AI-powered tools.
Dohmke’s leaving means that GitHub will no longer be a semi-independent company owned by Microsoft. But his promise to stay until 2025 to help with the transition shows how much he cares about the platform’s future success.
What will happen in the future and what will happen in the past
Thomas Dohmke’s time at GitHub changed the company and made it a leader in AI-driven software development. His leadership made GitHub more than just a place to store code; it became a developer ecosystem where AI tools like Copilot helped coders work smarter, not harder. His focus on AI fluency, agent orchestration, and working with AI changed the way developers think about their work.
The tech world is excited to see what Dohmke will do next with his new startup. His history of coming up with new ideas, from HockeyApp to GitHub Copilot, makes it likely that his next project will push the limits of AI or developer tools. At the same time, GitHub’s integration into Microsoft’s CoreAI team makes sure that Dohmke’s vision of a billion developers empowered by AI will continue to shape the future of software development.
He said, “The future of coding is about working with AI, not just using it as a tool.” The legacy of Thomas Dohmke at GitHub shows that vision. He left behind a platform that is stronger, more innovative, and more important to developers than ever before.
