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 Workforce Management (WFM) solutions. This role provides the opportunity to architect and evolve highly distributed systems that power time and attendance, scheduling, workforce planning, absence management, labor optimization, and enterprise workforce applications serving millions of users globally.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will provide technical leadership across multiple teams, define architectural direction, and drive the delivery of large-scale platform capabilities. You will champion engineering excellence, AI-first development practices, and operational maturity while partnering with engineering leaders, product management, and architects to shape the future of UKG's Workforce Management platform.

We are looking for an engineer who combines deep technical expertise with strategic thinking, influences engineering decisions across organizations, and mentors senior engineers while driving innovation throughout the software development lifecycle.

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Architecture

Define and drive the architectural vision for Workforce Management platforms, ensuring scalability, resiliency, performance, and maintainability.

Lead the design of large-scale distributed systems supporting timekeeping, scheduling, workforce planning, and labor optimization.

Drive architecture reviews and establish engineering standards across multiple teams.

Evaluate emerging technologies and influence long-term technology strategy.

Partner with Product, Architecture, and Engineering leadership to align technical investments with business priorities.

Software Engineering

Design scalable cloud-native services, APIs, event-driven systems, and distributed applications.

Drive modernization initiatives that improve platform scalability, reliability, developer productivity, and customer experience.

Lead engineering efforts for complex cross-functional initiatives spanning multiple teams.

Establish engineering best practices around performance, testing, observability, and maintainability.

AI-First Engineering

Champion AI-assisted engineering practices across the organization.

Drive adoption of AI tools for software design, implementation, testing, documentation, troubleshooting, and operational excellence.

Define best practices for responsible AI usage throughout the SDLC.

Identify opportunities to leverage AI to improve engineering productivity and software quality at scale.

Reliability & Operational Excellence

Drive platform-wide improvements in observability, monitoring, telemetry, and incident response.

Lead post-incident reviews and long-term reliability initiatives across multiple services.

Partner with SRE teams to establish reliability objectives, operational metrics, and service health standards.

Improve platform resiliency through automation and proactive engineering practices.

Security & Data Protection

Drive secure software design across Workforce Management services.

Ensure secure handling of employee, scheduling, attendance, and workforce data.

Champion security-by-design, privacy, governance, and compliance best practices across engineering teams.

Technical Leadership & Mentorship

Mentor senior engineers and technical leads across multiple teams.

Influence engineering culture through architecture reviews, design guidance, and technical coaching.

Raise engineering standards through technical governance, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement.

Build consensus across organizations on complex technical decisions.

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field.

10+ years of professional software engineering experience.

Extensive experience developing large-scale distributed systems using Java and/or Python.

Proven expertise designing cloud-native microservices and enterprise SaaS platforms.

Strong experience with SQL, distributed data systems, and scalable data models.

Hands-on experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP.

Strong understanding of distributed caching, messaging, and event-driven architectures.

Experience with observability platforms such as Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Kibana, or similar.

Demonstrated success leading architecture and technical initiatives across multiple engineering teams.

Proven ability to influence technical direction beyond immediate team boundaries.

Deep understanding of secure software development and enterprise-scale application design.

Demonstrated AI-first engineering mindset with hands-on use of AI-assisted development tools.

Exceptional communication, collaboration, mentoring, and technical leadership skills.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience building Workforce Management (WFM), Human Capital Management (HCM), HR Technology, Time & Attendance, Scheduling, Labor Management, or Workforce Planning platforms.

Experience designing highly scalable multi-tenant SaaS platforms serving millions of users.

Strong understanding of workforce scheduling, labor optimization, attendance management, workforce forecasting, and compliance.

Experience leading platform modernization and cloud transformation initiatives.

Expertise with Kubernetes, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, and DevOps best practices.

Demonstrated ability to influence architecture and engineering strategy across organizations.

Experience establishing engineering standards and mentoring senior technical talent.

Experience driving AI-assisted software engineering adoption at organizational scale.

This version reflects the expectations of a Staff Software Engineer at UKG—less focused on feature delivery and more on technical vision, platform architecture, cross-team leadership, and organizational impact while remaining aligned to the Workforce Management domain.

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