Forward Deployed Engineer III - Eng

UKG•Seattle, WA

21d•$102,300 - $169,000

About The Position

Forward Deployed Engineers solve problems that do not yet have playbooks. They sit close to customers and close to the code: learning the customer's world, identifying where software and AI can change how work gets done, and building the production systems that make those ideas real. At UKG, you will partner directly with customers to understand complex HCM, Payroll, and Workforce Management challenges, rapidly prototype new ideas, and deliver high-quality integrations, automations, and AI-enabled workflows that create measurable customer value. This is an engineering-first, customer-facing role for builders who are curious about how businesses work, creative in how they solve problems, and persistent enough to keep iterating until the solution works in the real world. You do not need to arrive as an enterprise HCM expert. You do need to be a strong engineer with the curiosity to learn unfamiliar domains, the creativity to design novel solutions, and the perseverance to work through ambiguity. At the Forward Deployed Engineer III level, you will typically own a customer workstream or technical solution area, with guidance from Staff and Principal FDEs on broader engagement strategy. You will be expected to build independently, communicate clearly, and contribute reusable patterns that help the broader team move faster. The best FDEs do more than implement software. They discover patterns, invent better ways to solve customer problems, and turn what works in the field into reusable capabilities that shape the future of the platform. In this role, your work will help enterprise customers adopt UKG's platform and emerging AI capabilities faster, while giving Product and Engineering direct insight into what customers need next. You will be close to the problem, close to the customer, and close to the code.

Requirements

5+ years of experience building software, developer platforms, cloud applications, AI-enabled products, technical solutions, or production integrations.
Strong software engineering fundamentals, including APIs, cloud services, data flows, testing, deployment, monitoring, and debugging.
Experience building and deploying production systems or customer-facing technical solutions.
Comfort working in ambiguous environments, learning new domains quickly, and iterating toward outcomes.
Strong communication and collaboration skills in customer-facing or cross-functional environments.
Ability to translate business requirements and technical constraints into practical, working solutions.
Familiarity with modern cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.
Hands-on familiarity with AI-enabled tools, LLMs, copilots, workflow automation, or agentic patterns.
Sound judgment around security, privacy, compliance, and responsible use of AI.

Nice To Haves

Enterprise software experience is a differentiator, not a gatekeeper. Exceptional engineers from startup, SaaS, platform, developer tools, AI product, consulting, or modern enterprise software backgrounds are encouraged to apply.
Experience with HCM, Payroll, Workforce Management, ERP, IAM, SSO, or integration-heavy environments.
Experience with REST APIs, event-driven systems, ETL/ELT, data pipelines, workflow orchestration, or identity integrations.
Experience contributing reusable frameworks, templates, internal tools, or reference architectures.
Familiarity with agent patterns such as tools, orchestration, retrieval, evaluation, and human-in-the-loop controls.
Experience working directly with customers, users, or business stakeholders to turn ambiguous needs into working software.

Responsibilities

Partner directly with customers to understand business challenges, technical constraints, and opportunities for innovation.
Own technical delivery for a customer workstream from discovery through design, build, testing, go-live, and early operational handoff.
Rapidly prototype ideas, test assumptions, iterate from customer feedback, and convert successful prototypes into maintainable production systems.
Build high-quality software components, integrations, APIs, event-driven workflows, data pipelines, and automation.
Translate ambiguous customer needs into clear technical designs, implementation plans, and operational runbooks.
Explore unfamiliar technologies, customer domains, and AI capabilities with curiosity, speed, and sound engineering judgment.
Collaborate with Product and Engineering to identify platform gaps, repeatable customer needs, and opportunities to productize field-built solutions.
Contribute reusable components, templates, reference patterns, and implementation notes that accelerate future delivery.
Communicate technical tradeoffs clearly to customer stakeholders, internal engineering teams, product leaders, and executives.
Navigate difficult delivery moments with creativity, perseverance, and a bias toward making progress.
Help customers identify practical, high-impact uses of AI within existing enterprise workflows.
Prototype and implement AI-enabled automation patterns within approved security, privacy, and compliance guardrails.
Integrate AI capabilities into existing systems and processes using secure, auditable designs.
Design human-in-the-loop workflows that balance automation, accuracy, explainability, and operational control.
Apply good judgment when working with sensitive data, access controls, evaluation, monitoring, and failure modes.
Contribute reusable AI workflow examples, implementation notes, and lessons learned to the FDE library.