Sr. Staff Software Engineer- Eng
About The Position
At UKG, the work you do matters. The code you ship, the decisions you make, and the care you show a customer all add up to real impact. Today, tens of millions of workers start and end their days with our workforce operating platform. Helping people get paid, grow in their careers, and shape the future of their industries. That’s what we do. We never stop learning. We never stop challenging the norm. We push for better, and we celebrate the wins along the way. Here, you’ll get flexibility that’s real, benefits you can count on, and a team that succeeds together. Because at UKG, your work matters—and so do you. We're looking for a Sr. Staff Software Engineer to anchor the technical direction of our core platform and backend services. This is a senior individual-contributor role with architecture-level scope: you'll set the technical bar for how our platform is built, stay hands-on with design and code on the highest-leverage problems, and act as a trusted technical voice across multiple engineering teams.
Requirements
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 3+ years in a lead or staff-level capacity.
- Proven experience owning architecture for a significant backend product area, ideally in a SaaS environment.
- Strong proficiency in a backend language (e.g., Java, C#, Kotlin) and experience with microservices, distributed systems, and API design.
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), CI/CD pipelines, and container orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Hands-on use of AI coding agents to accelerate day-to-day development work.
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction and mentor engineers across teams.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Nice To Haves
- Experience modernizing legacy platforms or leading large-scale technical migrations.
- Exposure to observability and SRE practices in a high-availability production environment.
- Experience with event-driven architectures and messaging systems (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ).
- Familiarity with AI/ML-enabled engineering workflows beyond coding assistance.
Responsibilities
- Own end-to-end architecture for core backend services, balancing scalability, reliability, security, and cost.
- Set technical standards, design patterns, and engineering best practices that other teams adopt.
- Lead architecture reviews and major design decisions, and evaluate emerging technologies for real business fit.
- Design and build highly available, distributed backend systems and the APIs that expose them.
- Stay hands-on with complex, business-critical implementation alongside the teams you influence.
- Guide teams through the full software development lifecycle, from design through production support.
- Champion quality, observability, and operational readiness across the services you help design.
- Lead root-cause analysis on complex production issues and drive fixes that improve long-term resilience.
- Raise the bar on code review, testing, and CI/CD practices across teams.
- Use AI coding agents (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor) as a standard part of your workflow to accelerate development, refactor code, and debug production issues without sacrificing quality or security.
- Identify practical opportunities to embed AI-driven capabilities into the platform and into how the team builds software.
- Help establish responsible, secure norms for AI-assisted development across the org.
- Mentor engineers at all levels through design reviews, pairing, and hands-on technical guidance.
- Influence technical direction across teams without relying on formal management authority.
Benefits
- flexibility that’s real
- benefits you can count on
- a team that succeeds together
- performance-based bonus plan
- restricted stock unit awards
- Learn more about UKG’s benefits and rewards at https://www.ukg.com/about-us/careers/benefits
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
Associate degree
