Sr. Staff Software Engineer- Eng

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.

About this role -

UKG is hiring a Sr. Staff Software Engineer for the UKG Engineering team. In this role you will be responsible for leading and driving the architectural design and implementation of key modules within the product. This role requires a strong technical background and a passion for driving innovation and efficiency. Sr. Staff Software Engineers participate in how we define, implement, and enforce an overall architecture practice, including principles and standards. They are focused on improving efficiency and effectiveness of the business through architectural designs that align and fit within the technical ecosystem. They are the primary drivers of design, while also being technically hands-on to support the teams and ensure that ongoing feature deliveries are well-designed, resilient and optimized for performance. This role will work as a thought leader in our WFM pillar to help define and govern the processes spanning over the whole software development lifecycle. The ideal candidate is an experienced software developer or current architect with experience in cloud infrastructure, enterprise architecture, and software development principles.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and support to UKG Scheduling engineering teams
• Develop, design, and communicate a clear architectural vision and design for the teams that is aligned with the organization's goals and objectives, while keeping a product suite mindset at the forefront.
• Understand product requirements, drive for clarity of requirements to ensure the design is fit for purpose, and ensure design supports architecture strategy.
• Develops technical roadmaps and ensures that services for the suite meet established architectural guidelines and standards.
• Deep dive into the code to confirm design integrity and maintain a cost-effective straightforward design throughout the teams.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including developers, operations, and product managers, to gather requirements and ensure architectural design meets the needs of internal and external stakeholders.
• Collaborate with peers and technical leaders to define/articulate constraints and guidelines.
• Define and enforce CI/CD standards, development methodologies, and quality assurance processes.
• Identify and mitigate risks associated with architectural decisions.
• Ensure effective adoption of observability tools for proactive alerting of production performance issues, adopt service-owner mindset to ensure quick recovery from problems, and constantly seek opportunities to improve resilience of services from failures.
• Leverage artificial intelligence tools to identify productivity improvements for engineering teams, as also value-add features for our users.
• Document and maintain the product & service architecture
• Drive strategic architecture vision and innovation.
• Identify and evaluate emerging technologies, industry trends, and best practices to ensure the Value Streams scalability, security, and performance.
• Provide architecture leadership, focusing on creating and maintaining cross-product and multi-year architecture visions
• Identify architecture risks, develop mitigation strategies, and maintain architectural opportunities for all stakeholders.
• Understand how architecture is done across the industry; research new technology trends; identify innovations that can drive a competitive advantage for UKG products.

• Bachelors/Master's in engineering / Computer Science or equivalent experience
• 8 years of software development experience in a fast-paced environment, working through all phases of the software development life cycle.
• Proven experience as a lead software developer or similar role, driving the architecture and implementation of complex software solutions.
• Possess extensive design portfolios showing high proficiency in Java based development technologies for SaaS and Multi-Tenant systems.
• Experience leveraging observability tools such as Datadog and Grafana for production monitoring.
• Experience with modern cloud technology (GCP, AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, etc.) and the ability to design a solution that operates optimally in a cloud environment, including cost optimizations, leveraging managed services, observability, etc.
• Strong exposure for highly reliable, scalable, secure, and decoupled solution
• Strong exposure of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery process (CI/CD)
• Hands on Experience in Building Ai Agents.
• Expert proficiency in using AI tools like Claude Code and Github Copilot in the Flow of work.
• Experience in object-oriented programming and design, Service oriented architecture and design patterns
• Excellent leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and collaborate with stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
• Excellent problems solving skills, with the ability to handle the most complex issues.
• Experience with relational and non-relational database technologies (SQL Server, Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, etc.)

• Experience with payroll, HCM, financial, or other highly regulated domains.
• Familiarity with Angular or modern front-end integration patterns.
• Experience integrating AI or analytics-driven capabilities into production systems.
• Background in event-driven, batch, or hybrid payroll processing architectures.
• Experience supporting multi-tenant SaaS platforms at scale.
• Track record of modernizing legacy systems or leading significant refactors.