Senior Principal Software Architect – AI, M&A & Scale

UKG; Atlanta (GA); On-site; USD 207,000 - 298,000; Full time

Job summary

UKG is hiring a Senior Principal Software Engineer to lead the Ready SMB - Architecture & Design, focusing on integrating AI responsibly at product scale and guiding M&A technical outcomes. This is a strategic, hands-on IC role shaping architecture, governance, and product integration for a scalable SMB platform.

You will own architecture for Ready's SMB product family, enable multi-tenant, API-first design, and drive cross-functional alignment across Product, Engineering, Security, and

Qualifications

• Seasoned architectural leader with SaaS product scale experience.
• Hands-on in multi-tenant SaaS systems and API-first design.
• Proven experience integrating AI/ML into production products, including MLOps.
• Direct involvement in technical due diligence and post-close integration for acquisitions.
• Deep knowledge of public cloud architectures (AWS/GCP/Azure) and security.
• Strong documentation and architecture decision skills; able to influence senior leaders.
• Advanced degree preferred but not required if experience demonstrates equivalent stature.

Responsibilities

• Define Ready SMB architecture to support 55K+ customers and scale to $1.2B revenue.
• Lead technical due diligence and integration for acquisitions.
• Design AI integration patterns, model serving, and MLOps pipelines.
• Set platform standards for cloud, CI/CD, Kubernetes, observability, and SRE.
• Mentor engineers and drive architecture reviews.
• Produce architecture decision records and runbooks.

Skills

Architectural leadership

SaaS multi-tenant

AI in production

M&A integration

Cloud & platform

SRE & security

Executive communication

Education

MS/PhD preferred

Tools

Kubernetes

APIs

Job description

UKG is hiring a Senior Principal Software Engineer to lead the Ready SMB - Architecture & Design, focusing on integrating AI responsibly at product scale and guiding M&A technical outcomes. This is a strategic, hands-on IC role shaping architecture, governance, and product integration for a scalable SMB platform.

You will own architecture for Ready's SMB product family, enable multi-tenant, API-first design, and drive cross-functional alignment across Product, Engineering, Security, and