Principal Software Architect - Payroll Platform & AI

UKG; Town of Florida (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

UKG in New York is seeking a Senior Software Architect to define and evolve the architecture for large-scale payroll processing systems. You will drive decisions across back-end services, data stores, APIs, and front-end integration, ensuring high availability and regulatory compliance.

You will lead architecture reviews, mentor engineers, and design high-throughput engines and data pipelines that handle complex payroll rules across jurisdictions.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience; 3+ years at senior level.
• Deep experience designing and building distributed systems using .NET Core and modern backend architectures.
• Strong hands-on experience with PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB; data modeling and performance tuning.
• Experience building and supporting large-scale, business-critical processing systems.
• Proven ability to lead architecture, influence technical decisions, and mentor engineers.
• Strong problem-solving skills; able to break ambiguous problems into clear technical designs.
• Experience collaborating with AI/ML or data science teams to productionize analytical capabilities.
• Experience with payroll, HCM, financial, or other regulated enterprise systems.
• Familiarity with AI concepts such as anomaly detection and model inference pipelines.
• Experience designing systems with compliance, auditability, and data privacy in mind.
• Front-end experience with Angular applications.
• Background in event-driven, batch, or hybrid processing architectures.
• Track record of shaping long-term platform architecture across teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the architecture for large-scale, distributed payroll processing agents and supporting services.
• Drive architectural decisions across backend services, data stores, APIs, and front-end integration points.
• Ensure systems are designed for high availability, correctness, scalability, observability, and regulatory compliance.
• Lead architecture and design reviews; set standards for system design, code quality, and operational readiness.
• Design and optimize high-throughput payroll calculation engines and batch/near-real-time processing pipelines.
• Build systems that handle complex payroll rules, country/state variations, and edge cases with deterministic accuracy.
• Ensure strong transactional integrity, auditability, and traceability across payroll workflows.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex issues involving data consistency, performance bottlenecks, or distributed processing failures.
• Partner with AI, data science, and applied ML teams to integrate AI-driven capabilities into payroll processing flows.
• Translate AI and analytical requirements into scalable, production-grade software designs.
• Enable intelligent automation, anomaly detection, forecasting, or recommendations without owning model creation.
• Design systems that support explainability, monitoring, and safe rollout of AI-assisted features in regulated environments.
• Design data models and persistence strategies across relational (Postgres, MySQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB) systems.
• Ensure efficient schema evolution, data partitioning, and performance optimization at scale.
• Build and evolve APIs and services that expose payroll and analytical data securely and reliably.
• Collaborate with front-end teams to support Angular-based applications and workflows.
• Background in event-driven, batch, or hybrid processing architectures.
• Front-end experience supporting or integrating with Angular applications.
• Track record of shaping long-term platform architecture across multiple teams or domains.
• Experience modernizing legacy systems or leading large-scale technical transformations.

Skills

Distributed systems design

NET Core

PostgreSQL

MySQL

MongoDB

Architectural leadership

Data modeling

Angular integration

Event-driven architecture

Job description

UKG in New York is seeking a Senior Software Architect to define and evolve the architecture for large-scale payroll processing systems. You will drive decisions across back-end services, data stores, APIs, and front-end integration, ensuring high availability and regulatory compliance.

You will lead architecture reviews, mentor engineers, and design high-throughput engines and data pipelines that handle complex payroll rules across jurisdictions.