Senior Software Engineer

Western Governors University•Salt Lake City, UT

4d•$143,700 - $222,700

About The Position

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career. Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families. The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs. At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is: Grade: Technical 410 Pay Range: $143,700.00 - $222,700.00 The Senior Software Engineer is responsible for the research, design, development, analysis, testing, and implementation of software operating or application systems. They communicate project information to client, project manager, or other design personnel working on projects. They maintain good working relationships with clients and staff. They write and maintains complete documentation. They support team members and ensures established goals and deadlines are met. They keep management informed of status and significant problems. The Senior Software Engineer designs, builds, and delivers scalable, high-quality software systems across the full stack. This role contributes to modern web applications and services, working across frontend, backend, and APIs to deliver end-to-end solutions. This engineer partners closely with product, design, and engineering teams to solve complex problems, drive technical direction, and improve system performance, reliability, and user experience. They are comfortable working across multiple languages and frameworks — primarily Java/Spring Boot and TypeScript/Node.js with Angular on the frontend — building cloud-native, event-driven services on AWS. They own the operational health of student-facing systems, handle student data responsibly (FERPA), mentor engineers, and contribute to a strong engineering culture.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field
6+ years of experience building and delivering full-stack applications
Experience developing web applications and APIs using modern languages (e.g., Java, TypeScript/Node.js, JavaScript)
Experience with frontend frameworks (e.g., Angular or similar)
Experience working with service-based or modular architectures
Experience contributing to or leading system design decisions
Equivalent experience may substitute for formal education
Hands-on experience building and operating services on AWS (Fargate/ECS, Lambda, API Gateway, RDS, S3).
Experience with containerized microservices (Docker, Kubernetes).
Experience with event-driven architecture or messaging (Kafka or similar).

Nice To Haves

Experience working across multiple programming languages and frameworks in a full-stack environment
Experience with AWS or other cloud platforms
Experience with backend frameworks such as Spring Boot or Node.js
Experience with CI/CD pipelines and modern deployment practices
Experience with observability and incident response using Dynatrace and CloudWatch.
Experience working in Agile/Scrum environments
Experience mentoring engineers or acting as a technical lead
Experience with API design and system integration
Familiarity with tools such as GitHub, JIRA, VS Code, IntelliJ
Experience with SQL and data modeling
Experience with NestJS and the Angular ecosystem (NgRx, Nx).
Experience with Kubernetes/Argo and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform).
Experience with event streaming (Kafka/Confluent, schema registry).
Experience with content/forms platforms such as Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), Form.io, or FormAssembly (for the Marketing/Pre-Enrollment team).
Experience with accessibility testing (axe-core, Playwright/Cypress).
Experience with trunk-based development and modern branching/release strategies.

Responsibilities

Participates in on-call rotation and acts as the escalation point for complex production incidents; owns availability, MTTR, and change-success outcomes for the team's services.
Leads migrations and modernization within the domain (framework/library upgrades, service re-platforming, database changes) and manages the team's technical-debt landscape.
Challenges incomplete, conflicting, or infeasible requirements and drives root-cause analysis rather than fixing symptoms.
Uses AI-assisted development tools effectively and responsibly, within data-handling and security policies.
Leads troubleshooting and resolution of production incidents, including on-call response, and drives post-incident improvements that prevent recurrence
Owns the quality, performance, reliability, and accessibility (WCAG/ADA) of student-facing systems within their domain.
Ensures accessibility (WCAG/ADA) in student-facing applications.
Owns operational health: on-call participation, incident response, and ownership of availability/MTTR/change-success metrics.