Staff Software Engineer-UKG Ready Payroll

UKG • Lowell, MA

2d • $133,900 - $190,750 • Hybrid

About The Position

UKG is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for its Payroll Engineering organization. This technical leadership role is responsible for the architecture, scalability, reliability, and long-term technical strategy of the payroll platform. The engineer will influence engineering direction across multiple teams, lead the design of mission-critical systems, and serve as a technical mentor and advisor to engineers and leaders.

The role will help modernize the platform, advance cloud-native architectures, and identify opportunities to use AI-driven capabilities to improve engineering productivity and customer outcomes. It combines deep technical expertise and architectural leadership with hands-on development and the ability to align engineering investments with business objectives. The position follows 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.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• At least 9 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 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, and drive adoption where they create measurable business value.
• Influence architecture and engineering decisions across teams and 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 spanning 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 use AI technologies, including 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, foster technical excellence, innovation, inclusion, and continuous learning, and influence hiring, onboarding, career development, and succession planning.
• Champion end-to-end ownership from requirements through production operations; improve reliability, observability, deployment automation, and service health; and define and monitor operational metrics and SLOs.
• Communicate complex technical concepts to engineering, product, and executive stakeholders; build consensus across teams; and represent engineering in strategic planning and cross-functional initiatives.

Benefits

• Employees may be eligible to participate in a performance-based bonus plan.
• Employees may be eligible to receive restricted stock unit awards as part of total compensation.
• UKG states that it offers benefits and rewards; specific benefits are not detailed in the posting.

What This Job Offers

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