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.

Summary

UKG is hiring a P4 Software Engineer (Unified Engineer) with deep Java expertise to lead design and delivery of cloud-native services and AI-enabled capabilities across the product stack. You will own technical direction for medium-to-large features, drive engineering excellence (quality, performance, security, reliability), and mentor engineers while partnering closely with Product, Architecture, and Platform teams.

Responsibilities

Lead design and implementation of Java (Spring Boot) microservices/APIs and shared platform components.

Drive end-to-end delivery for complex initiatives: architecture, estimation, execution, rollout, and production readiness.

Build AI-enabled capabilities (LLM workflows, RAG, evaluation, guardrails, privacy/safety controls) with measurable outcomes.

Define and improve non-functional requirements: resiliency, scalability, latency, observability, cost efficiency.

Set patterns and standards: code quality, testing strategy, API design, backward compatibility, documentation.

Troubleshoot critical production issues; lead root-cause analysis and reliability improvements.

Mentor engineers (P2–P3), raise team capability through reviews, pairing, and technical guidance.

Collaborate with Product/UX/QA/SRE/Security to deliver secure, compliant solutions.

Required Qualifications

6–10 years professional software engineering experience with strong Core Java (Java 11+ preferred).

Proven experience designing and operating distributed systems and RESTful APIs at scale.

Strong Spring ecosystem experience (Spring Boot, testing, dependency injection, build tooling).

Strong database skills: SQL, schema design, performance tuning; NoSQL experience is a plus.

Cloud experience with AWS or Azure (networking, compute, storage, IAM/security).

CI/CD, automated testing, and production operations mindset (on-call/incident response exposure).

Preferred Qualifications

Kubernetes (EKS/AKS), containers, service mesh concepts.

Event-driven architecture (Kafka/SQS/SNS/Event Hubs), idempotency, eventual consistency patterns.

Observability with OpenTelemetry and metrics/logs/tracing; SLI/SLO and error-budget thinking.

AI/LLM integration experience: Azure OpenAI/OpenAI/Bedrock; vector search, prompt/versioning, evaluation frameworks.

Infrastructure as Code: Terraform/CloudFormation/Bicep; security best practices (secrets, OWASP, threat modeling).

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

It is the policy of Ultimate Software to promote and assure equal employment opportunity for all current and prospective Peeps without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, marital status, familial status, sexual orientation, pregnancy, genetic information, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, veteran status, and any other legally protected status entitled to protection under federal, state, or local anti-discrimination laws. This policy governs all matters related to recruitment, advertising, and initial selection of employment. It shall also apply to all other aspects of employment, including, but not limited to, compensation, promotion, demotion, transfer, lay-offs, terminations, leave of absence, and training opportunities.