Staff 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 seeking a highly experienced Staff Software Engineer to join our dynamic team. This role will provide you with the opportunity to work on cutting-edge SaaS technologies and impactful projects that are used by enterprises and users worldwide. You will drive technical strategy, lead large-scale projects, and mentor engineers across the organization. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will be responsible for the design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of highly complex software systems.

• Full-Stack Software Development: Design and develop efficient, secure, and maintainable code across front-end (JavaScript, React) and back-end (Java, SQL) systems. Apply automation testing and observability best practices to ensure quality and maintainability across the stack.
• Technical Strategy & Influence: Define and guide technical strategy for key initiatives, ensuring alignment with business needs around scalability, modernization, and AI integration. Influence others through clear communication, data, and structured technical proposals.
• Leadership & Mentorship: Provide hands-on leadership in cross-functional initiatives, establishing and reinforcing engineering best practices. Mentor junior engineers, foster a growth mindset, and model ownership of the full SDLC.
• Architectural Excellence: Collaborate on the design and evolution of scalable, secure, and reliable systems. Help lead modernization efforts of legacy components and implement observability frameworks for service health.
• Complexity Navigation: Tackle ambiguous and technically complex challenges with innovative, long-term solutions. Help set technical direction and architectural standards across services.
• Impact & Decision-Making: Influence team-level roadmaps by balancing innovation, debt reduction, and customer needs. Drive clear prioritization and technical trade-off discussions.
• Service Health: Own service reliability and incident management processes. Apply observability tooling and telemetry to proactively prevent and remediate issues. Conduct RCA and contribute to long-term prevention.
• Engineering Quality & Testing: Champion engineering excellence by embedding automation (unit, integration, UI) into workflows and leveraging the test automation pyramid to guide scalable test strategies.
• DevOps and Lifecycle Ownership: Own the CI/CD lifecycle from design to deployment. Contribute to toolchain evolution to support team velocity and quality.
• Code & Design Review: Lead thoughtful, inclusive code and architecture reviews. Provide constructive feedback aligned with team goals, maintainability, and security.
• Documentation: Maintain internal documentation to support scale, onboarding, and long-term service maintainability.
• Innovation & Continuous Learning: Champion experimentation with new technologies including AI-assisted development and observability. Stay current with industry trends and propose relevant adoption.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field
• 7+ years of hands-on software development experience, including full-stack work
• Strong proficiency in Java (without Spring), JavaScript/React, relational databases, and query optimization
• Experience with automation testing tools and frameworks (e.g., JUnit, Selenium)
• Strong understanding of security best practices in application development
• Deep experience designing and evolving scalable systems, with exposure to DevOps, CI/CD, and observability tooling (e.g., OpenTelemetry, Grafana, etc.)
• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers, lead projects, and establish best practices within a team
• Proficiency in GitHub and cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, or GCP)

• Experience in modernizing legacy applications and platforms
• Exposure to AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot) or applied AI use cases in software engineering
• Master's degree or advanced technical certifications
• Knowledge of accessibility standards and inclusive development practices
• Recognized as a go-to expert in one or more areas of software engineering
• Experience defining or contributing to internal standards or tech governance