Senior Staff Software Engineer- UKG Ready Payroll

UKG • Lowell, MA

2d • $150,500 - $214,500 • Hybrid

About The Position

UKG is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer with web application and platform services experience to join its engineering team. The role calls for a full-stack engineer who can design scalable enterprise applications, build platform services, and apply modern AI technologies to software development and customer solutions. The position requires strong Java expertise, familiarity with cloud-native architectures, and the ability to build and integrate AI-powered capabilities while following software engineering best practices.

The engineer will develop Java-based web applications and platform services, including front-end and server-side components, RESTful APIs, and microservices for enterprise SaaS applications. The role also includes building and maintaining AI-powered capabilities such as LLM integrations, RAG, semantic search, prompt orchestration, intelligent workflow automation, and AI agents. The engineer will work across the application stack, contribute to core infrastructure services for highly available SaaS applications, address complex production issues, and improve architecture, performance, scalability, observability, security, and engineering processes.

This role works in a hybrid model, with three days per week required in the Lowell office. Local candidates are highly preferred. UKG is unable to offer sponsorship for this position. The pay range is $150,500 to $214,500; actual base pay may vary based on skills, experience, job-related knowledge, and work location. Employees may also be eligible for a performance-based bonus plan and restricted stock unit awards.

Requirements

• BS/MS degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10 or more years of hands-on experience developing enterprise Java-based web applications.
• Strong experience with Java, J2EE, Spring Boot, Spring Framework, Hibernate/JPA, React, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3, REST APIs, microservices, SQL, and MVC architecture.
• Strong SQL experience, including stored procedures, functions, triggers, views, and query optimization.
• Experience working in Agile software development environments.
• Strong understanding of TDD, automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and software quality best practices.
• Excellent analytical, debugging, troubleshooting, and communication skills.
• Proven record of delivering high-quality, scalable software solutions on time.
• Experience integrating LLMs into enterprise applications using OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, or similar platforms.
• Experience implementing RAG, vector databases, embeddings, prompt engineering, MCP, tool calling, and AI orchestration frameworks.
• Demonstrated ability to use AI-assisted development tools to improve software quality, engineering productivity, testing, documentation, and code optimization while following engineering best practices.
• Understanding of responsible AI practices, prompt security, data privacy, AI governance, and AI evaluation methodologies.
• Ability to work in the Lowell office three days per week; local candidates are highly preferred.

Nice To Haves

• Experience implementing, managing, and improving deployments across private and public cloud platforms supporting enterprise SaaS applications.
• Experience developing infrastructure automation and platform tooling to improve scalability, reliability, deployment speed, and operational efficiency.
• Experience with AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, OpenShift, or other container orchestration technologies.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM Templates, or equivalent.
• Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, GitLab CI, or similar tools.
• Experience implementing monitoring and observability solutions using Datadog, Grafana, Prometheus, Splunk, OpenTelemetry, or equivalent platforms.
• Experience automating operational processes using Bash, Python, PowerShell, APIs, and infrastructure automation tools.
• Experience troubleshooting distributed systems across application, infrastructure, networking, and cloud environments.
• Strong focus on application performance optimization, scalability, reliability, security, and operational excellence.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, and maintain scalable Java-based web applications and platform services.
• Build secure, scalable, maintainable, high-quality software using modern engineering principles and best practices.
• Develop front-end and server-side components with Java, Spring Boot, React, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3, SQL, Hibernate/JPA, and related technologies.
• Design and implement RESTful APIs and microservices supporting enterprise SaaS applications.
• Build, integrate, and maintain AI-powered features, including LLM integrations, RAG, semantic search, prompt orchestration, and intelligent workflow automation.
• Design, develop, and optimize AI agents to automate engineering and business workflows using agent frameworks and tool integrations while following enterprise security practices.
• Use AI-assisted software development tools to improve engineering productivity while maintaining code quality, security, testing, and maintainability.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and recommend practical opportunities to improve developer productivity, platform capabilities, and customer experience.
• Work autonomously on complex technical issues across the application stack, including browsers, APIs, application services, databases, cloud infrastructure, and third-party libraries.
• Contribute to the design, implementation, and maintenance of core platform infrastructure services for highly available SaaS applications.
• Apply software design patterns and algorithms to build robust, scalable, and efficient solutions.
• Conduct constructive code reviews, mentor team members, and help minimize regression defects and technical debt.
• Write unit, integration, and API automation tests for new features, following TDD and CI best practices.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues through root cause analysis across applications, infrastructure, cloud services, and third-party integrations.
• Collaborate with Product Management, UX, QA, DevOps, Security, and cross-functional engineering teams.
• Continuously improve application architecture, performance, scalability, observability, security, and development processes.
• Champion clean code, secure coding standards, automation, performance optimization, AI-assisted development, and continuous improvement.

Benefits

• Benefits are offered, but specific benefit details are not provided in the posting.
• Employees may be eligible for a performance-based bonus plan.
• Employees may be eligible to receive restricted stock unit awards.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior