Principal Software Engineer-Student LifeCycle Services

WGU; Salt Lake City (UT); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

WGU is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead architectural strategy and scalable system design across the university's education platform. You will influence technology decisions, drive modernization efforts, and ensure best practices in security, reliability, and performance.

This leadership role requires guiding multiple teams, aligning technology with strategic goals, and mentoring the next generation of technical talent in a fast-paced, mission-driven environment.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve architecture strategies that span multiple engineering teams, products, and technology domains.
• Drive the design of scalable, resilient, secure, and maintainable systems that support WGU's mission-critical education platform.
• Identify opportunities to simplify and modernize existing systems while reducing operational complexity and technical debt.
• Establish architectural standards, design patterns, and engineering best practices that improve consistency and quality.
• Serve as a trusted technical advisor to engineering leadership, product management, and executive stakeholders.
• Translate business objectives into long-term technical strategies and architectural roadmaps.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, frameworks, and industry trends to identify innovations that create meaningful value for WGU and its students.
• Lead critical technical decision-making for initiatives with enterprise-wide impact.
• Champion software craftsmanship, maintainability, security, observability, reliability, and performance across engineering teams.
• Coach and mentor Staff Engineers, Senior Engineers, and emerging technical leaders.

Job description

If you're passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country-and you're committed to working hard to play your part in building that future-consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

Grade: Technical 412

Pay Range: $180,300.00 - $279,500.00

Job Description

Principal Software Engineer

The Principal Software Engineer is a position of technical expertise, influence, and leadership in the technology realm. The position will be required to apply their expert knowledge to ensure best practices and well-engineered architecture across the University. They will also be a key stakeholder and initiator of major changes to processes, engineering practices, and system administration. This position will be required to work in a space of solving critical issues and initiatives across multiple departments. It will require an extensive and deep understanding of cutting-edge practices and innovative approaches to problems. Principal Software Engineers are also tasked with establishing and maintaining a positive and productive culture based on the WGU Leadership Principles.

Shape the Future of Education Through Technology

At WGU, technology is at the heart of transforming higher education. As a Principal Software Engineer, you will serve as one of the organization's foremost technical leaders, influencing the architecture, scalability, reliability, and future direction of a platform that empowers hundreds of thousands of students on their educational journey.

This is not a role focused on day-to-day feature delivery. It is an opportunity to solve complex, organization-wide engineering challenges, define technical strategy across multiple product and engineering domains, and elevate the capabilities of an entire engineering organization. You will partner with senior engineering leaders, product executives, and business stakeholders to drive innovation, establish architectural direction, and create technology solutions that scale for the future.

If you are passionate about distributed systems, modern cloud architecture, technical leadership, engineering excellence, and mentoring the next generation of technical talent, we'd love to meet you.

What You'll Do

Lead Architecture Across the Enterprise

• Define and evolve architecture strategies that span multiple engineering teams, products, and technology domains.
• Drive the design of scalable, resilient, secure, and maintainable systems that support WGU's mission-critical education platform.
• Identify opportunities to simplify and modernize existing systems while reducing operational complexity and technical debt.
• Establish architectural standards, design patterns, and engineering best practices that improve consistency and quality across the organization.

Influence Technology Strategy

• Serve as a trusted technical advisor to engineering leadership, product management, and executive stakeholders.
• Translate business objectives into long-term technical strategies and architectural roadmaps.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, frameworks, and industry trends to identify innovations that create meaningful value for WGU and its students.
• Lead critical technical decision-making for initiatives with enterprise-wide impact.

Drive Engineering Excellence

• Champion software craftsmanship, maintainability, security, observability, reliability, and performance across engineering teams.
• Influence engineering practices around code quality, testing strategies, system design reviews, and operational readiness.
• Guide teams in balancing speed, quality, scalability, and long-term sustainability.
• Use data, metrics, and system insights to improve platform health and operational performance.

Mentor and Develop Technical Talent

• Coach and mentor Staff Engineers, Senior Engineers, and emerging technical leaders.
• Foster a culture of continuous learning, technical curiosity, and engineering excellence.
• Lead architecture reviews and design discussio