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 The Role

We are seeking a highly motivated Staff Software Engineer to join our engineering team focused on building scalable, reliable, and secure payroll and compliance solutions. This role provides the opportunity to work on highly distributed systems and business-critical platforms that support payroll processing, compliance workflows, and enterprise-scale applications.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will lead the design and delivery of complex technical solutions while driving engineering excellence across the software development lifecycle. We are looking for an engineer with an AI-first mindset who embraces unified engineering practices and takes end-to-end ownership from requirements through production operations.

You will collaborate closely with engineering, product, architecture, compliance, and operations teams to build secure, resilient, and highly observable systems while mentoring engineers and influencing technical direction across the organization.

Responsibilities

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Technical Leadership & Architecture

Lead the design, development, and delivery of complex software solutions supporting payroll, compliance, and enterprise applications.
Drive technical design discussions and influence architectural decisions that improve scalability, maintainability, security, and performance.
Evaluate technology choices, identify technical risks, and recommend solutions aligned with business objectives.
Partner with architects and senior engineering leaders to evolve platform capabilities and engineering standards.

Software Development

Design and develop scalable backend APIs, distributed systems, and cloud-native services.
Deliver high-quality, maintainable, and testable software using modern engineering practices.
Drive performance optimization initiatives across services, APIs, and data processing workflows.
Contribute to modernization efforts that improve system reliability, developer productivity, and operational efficiency.

AI-First Engineering

Champion AI-assisted software development practices across the team.
Utilize AI tools to accelerate requirements analysis, design reviews, code generation, testing, documentation, troubleshooting, and operational workflows.
Mentor engineers on effective and responsible use of AI throughout the SDLC.
Identify opportunities to improve engineering productivity through automation and AI-enabled workflows.

Reliability, Observability & Operations

Lead production incident response, root cause analysis, and long-term corrective actions.
Drive improvements in observability, telemetry, monitoring, alerting, and service health.
Establish operational excellence practices that improve system resiliency and reduce customer impact.
Partner with SRE and platform teams to improve service reliability and operational maturity.

Security & Compliance

Ensure applications adhere to secure coding practices and compliance requirements.
Drive secure handling of payroll, tax, financial, and personally identifiable information (PII).
Advocate for auditability, data governance, and security-by-design principles throughout the development lifecycle.

Mentorship & Engineering Excellence

Mentor and coach engineers through design reviews, code reviews, pair programming, and technical guidance.
Promote engineering best practices related to testing, observability, maintainability, and operational ownership.
Raise the technical bar across the team through continuous improvement initiatives and knowledge sharing.

Unified Engineering Ownership

Take end-to-end ownership across requirements, design, development, testing, deployment, monitoring, and production support.
Lead small to medium-sized projects and coordinate technical efforts across multiple contributors.
Collaborate effectively with product management, compliance teams, customer support, and other engineering teams to deliver customer-focused solutions.

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field.
8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
Strong expertise in Java and/or Python development.
Proven experience designing and delivering scalable backend services, APIs, and distributed systems.
Strong SQL and data modeling experience.
Hands-on experience with cloud platforms such as GCP, AWS, or Azure.
Experience with distributed caching technologies such as Redis and/or Hazelcast.
Strong experience with observability platforms including Grafana, Kibana, OpenTelemetry, or similar technologies.
Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical initiatives from design through production.
Proven experience troubleshooting and resolving complex production issues.
Strong understanding of secure software development and handling of sensitive customer data.
Demonstrated AI-first engineering mindset with hands-on use of AI-assisted development tools and workflows.
Strong ownership mentality as a unified engineer with experience operating services throughout the full SDLC.
Excellent communication, collaboration, and technical leadership skills.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience in payroll, tax, HR, fintech, compliance, or other highly regulated domains.
Understanding of U.S. and/or Canadian payroll processing concepts.
Experience with high-volume transaction processing systems.
Experience designing cloud-native microservices architectures.
Knowledge of CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, and modern DevOps practices.
Experience leading technical initiatives across multiple teams.
Experience establishing observability and operational excellence standards.
Experience driving adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices within development teams.
Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction and engineering best practices beyond immediate team boundaries.

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 [HIDDEN TEXT]

Staff Software Engineer- Eng