Sr. Staff Software Engineer-ENG

UKG is seeking a Sr Staff Software Engineer with deep platform and full-stack expertise to play a critical leadership role on the Pro Foundation team, which owns foundational HCM platform capabilities and shared services used by HR, Recruiting, Pay, and Benefits applications.
In this role, you will drive the architecture, design, modernization, and delivery of highly scalable SaaS services that improve reliability, extensibility, and developer productivity across the Pro HCM portfolio.
You will work in an agile environment, partnering closely with engineers, product managers, architects, and leadership to deliver secure, performant, accessible, and reusable platform capabilities. You will be responsible not only for building systems, but for defining how shared foundation services should be built, operated, and adopted across product teams.
You will champion an AI-first engineering mindset, leveraging modern AI capabilities to accelerate development, improve code quality, enhance system reliability, and transform how teams build and operate software.

Duties and Responsibilities:
Technical Leadership & Architecture:
• Own the architecture and design of enterprise-scale foundational HCM platform services used across HR, Recruiting, Pay, and Benefits applications
• Define and drive technical strategy, standards, and best practices for shared services, platform libraries, APIs, and modernization patterns
• Design scalable services and integration patterns that support modern web, mobile, and cross-suite HCM experiences
• Lead complex system design discussions and influence long-term technical decisions across product and platform teams
• Evaluate and incorporate AI-driven solutions and architectures where they provide measurable value to engineering productivity, reliability, or customer outcomes
Development & Delivery:
• Lead the development of high-impact platform capabilities, shared services, and modernization efforts across the Pro HCM foundation layer
• Ensure solutions meet performance, scalability, reliability, security, accessibility, and operability requirements
• Guide teams through all phases of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), from design through production readiness and adoption
• Contribute hands-on to critical areas of the codebase, especially where architectural direction, technical depth, or cross-team alignment is needed
Quality & Engineering Excellence:
• Champion a culture of quality-first development for shared foundation services
• Utilize AI to improve test coverage, defect detection, code review, documentation, and system observability
• Review code and system designs to ensure maintainability, scalability, security, and adoption readiness
• Drive improvements in CI/CD, observability, automation, and operational excellence for platform services
Cross-Team Influence:
• Collaborate across HR, Recruiting, Pay, Benefits, and related platform teams to align architecture and deliver cohesive foundation capabilities
• Lead cross-team initiatives that reduce duplication, clarify ownership, and improve adoption of shared services and platform patterns
• Partner with product and architecture leaders to refine requirements, define technical direction, and establish clear handoff and support models
Operational Excellence:
• Lead troubleshooting and root-cause analysis for complex production issues involving shared foundation services
• Improve system reliability, monitoring, incident response, and service ownership practices
• Participate in and improve on-call, support, and escalation processes for critical platform capabilities
Mentorship & Growth:
• Mentor and develop engineers across multiple teams
• Raise the bar for engineering standards, design thinking, code quality, and operational ownership
• Promote adoption of modern technologies, reusable platform patterns, tools, and methodologies
AI-First Engineering:
• Drive adoption of an AI-first approach across the software development lifecycle
• Leverage AI tools to accelerate development, improve code quality, and strengthen engineering documentation
• Apply AI to problem-solving, including defect resolution, performance optimization, and reliability improvements
• Identify opportunities to embed AI-driven capabilities into platform services, engineering workflows, and shared tooling
• Establish best practices for responsible, secure, and compliant AI usage
• Stay current with emerging AI technologies and guide teams on practical adoption

Qualifications:
• 8+ years of experience in enterprise software development, including significant experience building scalable services or platform capabilities
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience
• Experience designing distributed systems, APIs, integration patterns, and reusable platform components
• Experience with messaging systems such as Kafka or RabbitMQ
• Strong understanding of design patterns, OOP, BDD, TDD, secure engineering, and production readiness practices
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms; GCP experience preferred
• Proficiency with Git and modern CI/CD practices
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies and cross-team delivery models
• Track record of influencing technical direction across multiple teams or organizations. Demonstrated ability to set architectural standards and drive adoption.
• Proven ability to lead highly complex, cross-functional initiatives with significant business impact.

Preferred Qualifications:
• Experience leading cross-team platform, modernization, or shared services initiatives
• Strong background in performance, scalability, reliability, and operational excellence
• Experience modernizing legacy systems and enabling adoption of modern cloud-native patterns
• Exposure to observability, SRE practices, service ownership models, and incident response
• Experience with HCM, payroll, benefits, recruiting, or workforce platform domains
• Experience with AI/ML tools in engineering workflows or product capabilities

The pay range for this position is $145,600 to $240,695. The actual base pay offered may vary depending on skills, experience, job-related knowledge and work location. In addition to base pay, employees may be eligible to participate in a performance-based bonus plan and to receive restricted stock unit awards as part of total compensation. Learn more about UKG's benefits and rewards at https://www.ukg.com/about-us/careers/benefits