Staff Software Engineer (Cloud, Kubernetes)

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 looking for a curious and passionate Lead software engineer to join our Engineering Platform team. You will develop, enhance, and maintain tools, frameworks, and service infrastructure that support DevOps pipeline automation for various UKG products. This role involves collaborating with Product Management, Architects and internal engineering teams to understand requirements, implement solutions, identify issues, and propose improvements. The individual will work as a Leader, Developer, and Developer Advocate, working closely with product development teams to enable mature and evolve our Kubernetes and container platforms.

This work is in the Engineering Acceleration group supporting internal product teams in their deployments. The right technical background and experience will be with cloud technologies, GitHub Actions, Terraform and Ansible. Is recognized as an expert in their technical area.

This position may perform work with the U.S. government therefore

• Ideal candidate should be a U.S. Citizen
• Existing or previous Government Security Clearance preferred, or ability to obtain appropriate security clearance is required

Responsibilities:
• Software Development: Write clean, maintainable, and efficient code for various software applications and systems.
• Technical Strategy: Drive the technical strategy and vision for major projects and initiatives, ensuring alignment with business goals and industry best practices. Communicate complex concepts, anticipate potential objections, and influence others to adopt a point of view.
• Leadership: Lead cross-functional teams to design, develop, and deliver high-impact software projects on time and within budget. Coordinate activities and tasks of other team members, working independently and needing guidance only in the most complex situations.
• Architectural Excellence: Architect, design, and develop complex software systems and applications, ensuring high standards of performance, scalability, and reliability. Collaborate with architects on mid-level and high-level design.
• Complexity: Solve complex issues with innovative solutions, setting precedents as needed. Navigate information, alternatives, and relationships to achieve results. Communicate complex concepts, anticipate objections, and influence adoption of viewpoints.
• Impact: Impact the achievement of area/group objectives. Develop team policies, procedures, and techniques. Drive prioritization of technical debt, articulating the expected impact and outcomes.
• Service Health and Quality: Ensure the health and quality of services and incidents, proactively identifying and addressing issues. Utilize service health indicators and telemetry for action. Conduct thorough root cause analysis and implement measures to prevent future recurrences.
• Engineering Excellence Practices: Advocate for and implement best quality practices, hold a high bar for engineering excellence, and guide the team in maintaining service quality through the testing pyramid.
• DevOps Model: Oversee CI/CD pipelines, ensuring efficient build, test, and deployment phases. Take ownership from working with product management on requirements to designing, developing, testing, deploying, and maintaining software in production.
• Testing: Build testable software, define tests, participate in the testing process, automate tests using tools (e.g., JUnit, Selenium) and design patterns leveraging the test automation pyramid as the guide.
• Code Review: Conduct comprehensive code reviews, providing constructive feedback and ensuring adherence to best practices.
• Mentorship: Provide technical mentorship and guidance, fostering a culture of learning and continuous improvement. Mentor junior engineers on taking ownership of the full lifecycle of services and features.
• Documentation: Develop and maintain comprehensive technical documentation for software applications and systems.
• Innovation: Stay current with emerging technologies and industry trends, advocating for their adoption where appropriate to drive innovation and productivity enhancement within the team (e.g., CoPilot).

Minimum Qualifications:

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
7+ years of DevOps and software engineering experience
Deep expertise in one or more programming languages such as C, C++, C#, .NET, Python, Java, or JavaScript.
Extensive experience with GitHub Actions, leveraging Terraform and Ansible to create CI/CD pipeline automation frameworks and container-based deployments.
Deep experience working with Kubernetes, Docker, and public cloud deployment platforms
Deep expertise in backend Java, Go, JavaScript/Typescript (Node.js, NPM, React, Angular, etc.)
Extensive experience with software architecture and design patterns, including the ability to design and implement scalable, reliable systems in a DevOps model.
Proven track record of leading and delivering large-scale, complex software projects.
Proficiency with cloud technologies like Azure, AWS, GCP, and version control systems like GitHub.
Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail, with a commitment to delivering high-quality software solutions.
Proficiency in building telemetry or observability as part of the development process.
Strong leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and drive technical decisions across the organization.
Deep understanding of Kubernetes operators, networking primitives, including Services, Ingress, Gateway API, and service mesh architectures (e.g., Istio, Linkerd), with hands-on experience operating them at scale.
Strong expertise in DNS architecture and operations, including traffic management, split-horizon DNS, failover strategies, and performance optimization in large-scale distributed systems.
Proven experience designing and operating service-to-service routing, including L7 traffic shaping, canary deployments, blue/green releases, and zero-downtime migration strategies.
Experience with API gateway and edge routing technologies (e.g., NGINX, Envoy, Kong, or cloud-native equivalents), including authentication, rate limiting, and policy enforcement.
Hands-on experience with TLS/mTLS, certificate lifecycle management, and secure service-to-service communication in a Kubernetes or microservices environment.

Preferred Qualifications:

Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science or a related technical field.
Experience with GitHub Actions, Terraform, Ansible and Kubernetes
Familiarity with developing accessible technologies.
Dedicated to diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Demonstrated expertise in specialized disciplines and related fields. Recognized as an expert in their technical area.
Understanding of internal and external business challenges and regulatory factors. Apply best practices to improve products, processes, or services.

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.


Equal Opportunity Employer

UKG is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, disability, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, genetic information, and other legally protected categories.


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UKG participates in E-Verify. View the E-Verify posters here.


It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.


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 View email address on click.appcast.io.


The pay range for this position is $129,500 to $186,100. The actual base pay offered may vary depending on skills, experience, job-related knowledge and work location. In addition to base pay, employees may be eligible to participate in a performance-based bonus plan and to receive restricted stock unit awards as part of total compensation. Learn more about UKG's benefits and rewards at