Principal Software Engineer

Why UKG:

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 are looking for a Principal Software Engineer. In this role, you will shape the long-term technical vision of UKG's engineering organization, define novel architectural approaches, and establish UKG as an industry leader in applying AI responsibly and effectively in the HCM domain. Principal Engineers operate at the intersection of deep technical expertise, industry-level influence, and strategic business impact. You will collaborate with senior leadership, product, and engineering teams across the organization to set the direction for how AI capabilities are adopted, governed, and leveraged to deliver transformative value to UKG's customers.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Enterprise Technical Vision: Define and champion the long-term technical strategy for UKG's engineering platform, with a particular focus on AI/ML integration, cloud-native architecture, and developer productivity at scale.
• Industry-Level Thought Leadership: Represent UKG in the broader engineering community through publications, conference talks, open-source contributions, and industry standards participation. Elevate UKG's technical brand externally.
• Cross-Organizational Architecture: Lead architectural decisions and standards that span multiple engineering domains, products, and value streams. Ensure coherence, scalability, and security of UKG's overall technical ecosystem.
• AI Strategy & Governance: Own the enterprise-wide AI/ML technical strategy: define how AI capabilities are adopted, evaluated, and governed across the engineering organization. Make high-stakes architectural decisions with incomplete information at industry-defining scale.
• Executive Partnership: Partner with CTO, VPs of Engineering, and Product leadership to translate business goals into technical strategy. Influence resource allocation, technology investments, and build/buy/partner decisions for AI capabilities.
• Innovation: Identify transformative technology opportunities - especially in AI/GenAI - that can create step-change competitive advantage for UKG products. Prototype, validate, and advocate for bold technical bets.
• Mentorship & Talent Development: Elevate the entire engineering organization through mentoring P4/P5 engineers, establishing architectural principles, and creating a culture of technical excellence and responsible AI development.
• Standards & Governance: Define and enforce engineering-wide standards for code quality, AI evaluation, security, compliance, and developer experience. Govern responsible AI practices at the organization level, including safety, bias, and regulatory compliance.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work with legal, security, product, data science, and operations teams to ensure engineering decisions account for regulatory, ethical, and operational requirements at global scale.

• Bachelor's/Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent industry experience.
• 12+ years of software development experience, including significant time in senior technical leadership and architecture roles.
• Deep, broad expertise in software architecture across distributed systems, cloud-native platforms, SaaS multi-tenancy, and large-scale data systems.
• Proven track record of defining and executing multi-year technical strategies at the organization or industry level.
• Recognized internal and external expert with a portfolio of architectural decisions, publications, or contributions that have materially shaped technical direction.
• Visionary technical leadership in the application of AI/ML to core engineering and product challenges; recognized internally and externally for defining novel approaches to AI integration, evaluation, and governance.
• Enterprise-scale AI strategy ownership: setting direction for how AI capabilities are adopted, governed, and measured across the engineering organization; influencing executive decision-making on AI investments and risk management.
• Deep, broad expertise spanning AI architectural patterns, responsible AI, regulatory landscape, and emerging capabilities; ability to make high-stakes technical decisions with incomplete information at industry-defining scale.
• Excellent leadership, executive communication, and executive presence; demonstrated ability to influence senior stakeholders.

• PhD in Computer Science, ML, or a related field.
• External recognition: published research, notable open-source contributions, patents, or keynote presentations at major technical conferences.
• Deep experience with LLM fine-tuning, multi-agent systems, AI safety, and AI evaluation at scale.
• Experience defining regulatory compliance strategies for AI systems (GDPR, CCPA, EU AI Act).
• Experience with domain-specific AI applications in HCM, workforce management, or related enterprise SaaS domains.
• Demonstrated ability to develop and retain top engineering talent at P4/P5 levels.
  Company Overview:
  
  UKG is the Workforce Operating Platform that puts workforce understanding to work. With the world's largest collection of workforce insights, and people-first AI, our ability to reveal unseen ways to build trust, amplify productivity, and empower talent, is unmatched. It's this expertise that equips our customers with the intelligence to solve any challenge in any industry - because great organizations know their workforce is their competitive edge. Learn more at ukg.com.
  
  UKG is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and is committed to promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace, including the recruitment process.
  
  Disability Accommodation in the Application and Interview Process
  
  For individuals with disabilities that need additional assistance at any point in the application and interview process, please email UKGCareers@ukg.com