Senior Backend Architect: AI-Driven, Scalable Platform

UKG; Town of Florida (NY); On-site; USD 146,000 - 209,000; Full time

Job summary

UKG is seeking a Sr. Staff Software Engineer to anchor the technical direction of our core platform and backend services. This senior IC role sets the technical bar, stays hands-on, and serves as a trusted voice across engineering teams.

You'll lead end-to-end architecture, design scalable distributed systems, and drive best practices in API design, cloud deployment, and CI/CD. Mentorship and cross-team collaboration are essential to our mission.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 3+ years in a lead or staff-level capacity.
• Proven experience owning architecture for a significant backend product area, ideally in a SaaS environment.
• Strong proficiency in a backend language (e.g., Java, C#, Kotlin) and experience with microservices, distributed systems, and API design.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), CI/CD pipelines, and container orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Hands-on use of AI coding agents to accelerate day-to-day development work.
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction and mentor engineers across teams.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end architecture for core backend services, balancing scalability, reliability, security, and cost.
• Design and build highly available, distributed backend systems and the APIs that expose them.
• Lead architecture reviews and major design decisions, and evaluate emerging technologies for real business fit.
• Stay hands-on with design and code on the highest-leverage problems, and act as a trusted technical voice across teams.
• Guide teams through the full software development lifecycle, from design through production support.
• Champion quality, observability, and operational readiness across the services you help design.
• Lead root-cause analysis on complex production issues and drive fixes that improve long-term resilience.
• Raise the bar on code review, testing, and CI/CD practices across teams.
• Use AI coding agents as a standard part of your workflow to accelerate development, refactor code, and debug production issues.

Skills

Backend architecture

Java

C#

Kotlin

Microservices

Distributed systems

API design

Cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP)

CI/CD pipelines

Docker

Kubernetes

AI coding agents

Mentoring engineers

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Kafka

RabbitMQ

Job description

UKG is seeking a Sr. Staff Software Engineer to anchor the technical direction of our core platform and backend services. This senior IC role sets the technical bar, stays hands-on, and serves as a trusted voice across engineering teams.

You'll lead end-to-end architecture, design scalable distributed systems, and drive best practices in API design, cloud deployment, and CI/CD. Mentorship and cross-team collaboration are essential to our mission.