Staff Software Engineer- Payroll Platform

UKG • Lowell, MA

1d • $129,500 - $186,100 • Hybrid

About The Position

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join our Payroll Engineering organization. This is a senior technical leadership role responsible for driving the architecture, scalability, reliability, and long-term technical strategy of our payroll platform. As a Staff Engineer, you will influence engineering direction across multiple teams, lead the design of mission-critical systems, and serve as a technical mentor and trusted advisor to engineers and leaders throughout the organization.

You will play a key role in modernizing our platform, advancing cloud-native architectures, and identifying opportunities to leverage AI-driven capabilities to improve both engineering productivity and customer outcomes. This position requires deep technical expertise, strong architectural vision, and the ability to align engineering investments with business objectives.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Expert-level proficiency in Java and modern backend architecture patterns.
• Strong experience with React, TypeScript, and modern web application architectures.
• Deep understanding of microservices, event-driven systems, APIs, and enterprise integration patterns.
• Extensive experience with SQL and NoSQL databases and large-scale data architectures.
• Strong expertise in cloud-native technologies and platforms such as Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud Platform.
• Proven experience leading architectural initiatives across multiple teams or product areas.
• Experience implementing observability, reliability engineering, and operational excellence practices.
• Familiarity with AI technologies, Generative AI, LLM platforms, AI-assisted development tools, and enterprise AI adoption strategies.
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction and mentor engineers at all levels.
• Exceptional communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills.

Nice To Haves

• Experience designing and operating enterprise payroll, HCM, financial, or highly regulated systems.
• Experience with AI platform integration, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), vector databases, agentic frameworks, or machine learning systems.
• Experience leading cloud modernization or large-scale platform transformation initiatives.
• Knowledge of security, compliance, privacy, and governance requirements for enterprise SaaS platforms.
• Experience contributing to open-source projects, technical communities, or industry conferences.
• Track record of driving innovation and delivering measurable business impact through technology investments.
• Passion for fostering diverse, inclusive, and high-performing engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the long-term technical vision, architecture, and modernization strategy for Payroll platforms and services.
• Lead the design and evolution of highly scalable, resilient, secure, and maintainable distributed systems.
• Establish architectural standards, engineering best practices, and technical governance across multiple teams.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, including AI and Generative AI solutions, and drive adoption where they create measurable business value.
• Serve as a technical leader across engineering teams, influencing architecture and engineering decisions beyond immediate team boundaries.
• Partner with Engineering Managers, Product Leaders, Architects, and Principal Engineers to align technical strategy with organizational priorities.
• Lead technical discovery, proof-of-concepts, and platform initiatives that span multiple products and services.
• Drive engineering excellence through technical reviews, architecture assessments, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Contribute hands-on development for complex and business-critical initiatives.
• Champion software quality, observability, performance, security, and operational excellence throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Establish standards for testing, automation, deployment, and production readiness.
• Lead resolution of complex production incidents and conduct root cause analysis to improve platform resilience.
• Identify and implement opportunities to leverage AI technologies, including Large Language Models (LLMs), machine learning, and intelligent automation.
• Partner with product and engineering teams to incorporate AI-powered capabilities into payroll products and internal engineering workflows.
• Evaluate AI governance, security, scalability, and operational considerations for enterprise adoption.
• Mentor senior and emerging engineers across the organization.
• Foster a culture of technical excellence, innovation, inclusion, and continuous learning.
• Influence hiring, onboarding, technical career development, and succession planning.
• Champion end-to-end ownership from requirements through production operations.
• Drive improvements in reliability, observability, deployment automation, and service health.
• Define and monitor key operational metrics and service-level objectives (SLOs).
• Communicate complex technical concepts effectively to engineering, product, and executive stakeholders.
• Build consensus across teams and drive alignment on technical direction and priorities.
• Represent engineering in strategic planning discussions and cross-functional initiatives.

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

What This Job Offers

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