Senior Software Engineer - Operational Improvement

Western Governors University•Salt Lake City, UT

5d•$143,700 - $222,700

About The Position

The Senior Software Engineer researches, designs, develops, analyzes, tests, and implements software operating or application systems. The role communicates project information to clients, project managers, and other design personnel; maintains good working relationships with clients and staff; writes and maintains complete documentation; supports team members in meeting established goals and deadlines; and keeps management informed of status and significant problems. This hands-on role owns complex technical problems and helps shape systems and engineering practices supporting WGU and its students. The engineer makes thoughtful technical decisions, designs reliable and scalable solutions, and takes software from concept through production. Quality is treated as part of building software, with production coding, system and API design, automated testing, production observability, and continuous improvement of delivery practices. The Senior Software Engineer also influences technical direction, mentors engineers, anticipates risks, and helps raise engineering standards across the team. Success means becoming a trusted technical voice who can turn ambiguous problems into sound technical approaches, build and validate solutions, support them in production, and help other engineers make better technical decisions.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent relevant professional experience; relevant experience may substitute for formal education at the hiring manager’s discretion.
At least 6 years of professional software development experience, including experience introducing or advancing engineering approaches and technologies.
Experience developing web applications and web services using technologies such as Java, REST APIs, ServiceNow, databases, and third-party integrations.
Demonstrated experience writing and maintaining automated tests, including unit, integration, API, and/or end-to-end tests, as part of software development.
Strong software engineering fundamentals across system design, coding, testing, security, algorithms, development tooling, and the software delivery lifecycle.
Experience designing software that is scalable, reliable, secure, maintainable, fault-tolerant, and testable.
Strong understanding of automated testing and quality engineering, including the test pyramid, boundary-value analysis, equivalence partitioning, negative testing, mocking and stubbing, and test-data management.
Treat testing and production quality as part of engineering ownership rather than the responsibility of a separate QA function.
Experience designing and building modern web applications, APIs, services, database-backed applications, and system integrations.
Ability to choose appropriate design patterns and decompose complex systems into maintainable components.
Understanding of SaaS and cloud-based architectures and the tradeoffs involved in designing for scale, reliability, performance, and cost.
Experience using operational and engineering metrics to understand system health and improve software quality.
Ability to diagnose complex system-level problems and partner effectively with operations and other engineering teams.
Strong technical judgment and ability to balance ideal solutions with practical delivery needs.
Ability to identify technical risks, dependencies, and gaps in requirements early and propose practical solutions.
Strong communication skills, including explaining complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.
Collaborative approach to engineering and a track record of making other engineers stronger.
Curiosity about emerging technologies and ability to identify opportunities to improve the platform, engineering efficiency, or student experience.

Nice To Haves

Java or another modern object-oriented programming language.
REST APIs and service-oriented architectures.
JavaScript and TypeScript.
SQL and relational databases.
Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, or similar UI automation frameworks.
API testing approaches and tools such as Playwright API testing, Postman, REST Assured, or contract testing.
Performance and load testing with tools such as JMeter or BlazeMeter.
CI/CD pipelines and automated quality gates.
Observability and application-performance tools such as Dynatrace.
Cloud-native development, particularly AWS.
Modernization or migration of on-premises applications to cloud environments.
Integration with legacy or enterprise systems.
ServiceNow, IDM/OSSO, Hibernate/Seam, Banner, J2EE, or Java EE.
IntelliJ IDEA, VS Code, Jira, and Git.
Agile/Scrum development environments.
Relevant technical certifications.
Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.

Responsibilities

Own software solutions from design through production, translating functional and non-functional requirements into maintainable software and taking responsibility for post-release performance.
Design and build web applications, APIs, integrations, and services with scalability, reliability, security, performance, and cost in mind.
Own automated testing for delivered software, including unit, integration, API, and end-to-end testing.
Develop production code and UI and API test automation using tools such as Playwright and TypeScript, keeping tests fast, reliable, maintainable, and resistant to flakiness.
Participate in refinement and technical planning to define acceptance criteria, identify edge cases and dependencies, and determine testing strategies.
Integrate automated testing into CI/CD pipelines, treat failed quality gates as engineering issues, and diagnose and resolve failures.
Incorporate performance, load, accessibility, and security considerations into solutions.
Use observability tools such as Dynatrace to validate releases, troubleshoot issues, understand application behavior, and improve reliability.
Help lead rapid diagnosis and resolution of production issues to minimize disruption and restoration time.
Review code and provide feedback on architecture, implementation, automated tests, maintainability, and engineering quality.
Serve as a technical lead, consultant, or go-to engineer in an application or technical domain and help teams make sound engineering decisions.
Identify architectural concerns, dependencies, scalability challenges, and delivery risks early and help develop practical solutions.
Mentor engineers through pairing, design discussions, code reviews, documentation, presentations, and hands-on problem solving.
Partner with product, operations, engineering leadership, and other stakeholders to translate requirements and business needs into technical solutions.
Identify opportunities to improve architecture, tooling, quality, delivery practices, team effectiveness, and developer experience.
Balance engineering rigor with pragmatic delivery and make thoughtful decisions about where quality investment creates the greatest value.
Communicate project information, maintain working relationships, document work, support team goals and deadlines, and keep management informed of status and significant problems.