Sr. Staff Software Engineer- Eng

UKG•Sunrise, FL

3d•$145,600 - $209,300

About The Position

UKG is seeking a Sr. Staff Software Engineer to anchor the technical direction of its core platform and backend services. This senior individual-contributor role has architecture-level scope: the engineer sets the technical bar for platform development, remains hands-on with design and code for high-leverage problems, and serves as a trusted technical voice across multiple engineering teams. The role owns architecture for core backend services and helps build highly available, distributed systems and APIs. It guides teams through the software development lifecycle, from design to production support, and champions quality, observability, operational readiness, and resilience. The engineer also mentors engineers across levels, influences technical direction without formal management authority, and uses AI coding agents as a standard part of development while helping establish responsible, secure practices for AI-assisted engineering.

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 such as Java, C#, or Kotlin.
Experience with microservices, distributed systems, and API design.
Experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP; CI/CD pipelines; and container orchestration such as Docker and 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 such as Kafka or 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 for adoption by other teams.
Lead architecture reviews and major design decisions, and evaluate emerging technologies for business fit.
Design and build highly available, distributed backend systems and the APIs that expose them.
Contribute hands-on to complex, business-critical implementation alongside the teams influenced.
Guide teams through the full software development lifecycle, from design through production support.
Champion quality, observability, and operational readiness across services.
Lead root-cause analysis of complex production issues and drive fixes that improve long-term resilience.
Raise standards for code review, testing, and CI/CD practices across teams.
Use AI coding agents to accelerate development, refactor code, and debug production issues while maintaining quality and security.
Identify practical opportunities to embed AI-driven capabilities into the platform and team engineering practices.
Help establish responsible, secure norms for AI-assisted development across the organization.
Mentor engineers at all levels through design reviews, pairing, and hands-on technical guidance.
Influence technical direction across teams without formal management authority.