Senior Software Engineer - Operational Improvement

Western Governors University; Salt Lake City (UT); On-site; USD 144,000 - 223,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonuses

Healthcare benefits

Retirement plan

Job summary

Western Governors University in Salt Lake City is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to drive the design, development, testing, and deployment of software systems. You will own features from concept to production, collaborating with product and operations to ensure quality and reliability at scale.

You’ll write production code, design APIs, build automated tests, and mentor peers while elevating observability and performance in a fast-paced, mission-driven environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
• 6+ years of professional software development experience.
• Experience with web applications and APIs, Java, databases, and third‑party integrations.
• Automated testing experience and knowledge of quality engineering.

Responsibilities

• Own solutions from design through production.
• Design and build modern web applications and APIs with an emphasis on scalability, security, and performance.
• Develop test automation and expand CI/CD and observability.
• Provide architectural guidance and mentor other engineers.

Skills

System design

Coding

Testing

Security

Algorithms

Dev tooling

SDLC

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field

Tools

Java

REST APIs

ServiceNow

Databases

Playwright

Cypress

Selenium

Jira

VS Code

Dynatrace

Postman

REST Assured

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 410 Pay Range: $143,700.00 - $222,700.00

Job Description

The Senior Software Engineer is responsible for the research, design, development, analysis, testing, and implementation of software operating or application systems. They communicate project information to client, project manager, or other design personnel working on projects. They maintain good working relationships with clients and staff. They write and maintains complete documentation. They support team members and ensures established goals and deadlines are met. They keep management informed of status and significant problems.

Opportunity

As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll take ownership of complex technical problems and help shape the systems and engineering practices that support our university and its students. You’ll be trusted to make thoughtful technical decisions, design reliable and scalable solutions, and take software from concept through production. This is a hands‑on engineering role for someone who believes quality is part of building great software, not a separate step at the end of development. You’ll write production code, design systems and APIs, build automated testing into your solutions, use observability to understand how software behaves in production, and continuously improve the way your team delivers. Beyond your individual contributions, you’ll influence technical direction, mentor engineers, anticipate risks, and help raise the engineering bar across the team.

What You’ll Do

• Own solutions from design through production.
• Translate functional and non‑functional requirements into well‑designed, maintainable software and take responsibility for how your solutions perform after release.
• Solve complex engineering problems.
• Design and build web applications, APIs, integrations, and services with scalability, reliability, security, performance, and cost in mind.
• Build quality into the engineering lifecycle.
• Own automated testing for the software you deliver, including unit, integration, API, and end‑to‑end testing.
• Develop production code and test automation together.
• Build and maintain UI and API automation using tools such as Playwright and TypeScript, keeping tests fast, reliable, maintainable, and resistant to flakiness.
• Shape solutions before coding begins.
• Participate in refinement and technical planning, helping define acceptance criteria, uncover edge cases, identify dependencies, and determine the right testing strategy.
• Strengthen CI/CD and developer feedback loops.
• Integrate automated testing into delivery pipelines, treat failed quality gates as actionable engineering issues, and quickly diagnose and resolve failures.
• Engineer for real‑world conditions.
• Incorporate performance, load, accessibility, and security considerations into solutions using tools and approaches appropriate to the problem.
• Use observability to understand production systems.
• Leverage tools such as Dynatrace to validate releases, troubleshoot issues, understand application behavior, and improve reliability.
• Respond when systems need you.
• Help lead the rapid diagnosis and resolution of production issues, minimizing disruption and time to restoration.
• Raise the engineering bar through code review.
• Provide thoughtful feedback on architecture, implementation, automated tests, maintainability, and overall engineering quality.
• Influence technical direction. Serve as a technical lead, consultant, or go‑to engineer in an application or technical domain and help teams make sound engineering decisions.
• Anticipate technical risks. Identify architectural concerns, dependencies, scalability challenges, and delivery risks early, and help teams develop practical solutions before they become problems.
• Mentor and grow other engineers.
• Share your expertise through pairing, design discussions, code reviews, technical documentation, presentations, and hands‑on problem solving.
• Partner across disciplines.
• Work closely with product, operations, engineering leadership, and other partners to turn requirements and business needs into effective technical solutions.
• Improve how we engineer.
• Identify opportunities to strengthen architecture, tooling, quality, delivery practices, team effectiveness, and the overall developer experience.
• Balance engineering rigor with pragmatic delivery, making thoughtful decisions about where additional investment in quality creates the greatest value.

What You’ll Bring

• Strong software engineering fundamentals across system design, coding, testing, security, algorithms, development tooling, and the software delivery lifecycle.
• Experience designing software that is scalable, reliable, secure, maintainable, fault‑tolerant, and testable.
• Strong understanding of automated testing and quality engineering, including the test pyramid, boundary‑value analysis, equivalence partitioning, negative testing, mocking and stubbing, and test‑data management.
• A mindset that treats testing and production quality as part of engineering ownership, rather than the responsibility of a separate QA function.
• Experience designing and building modern web applications, APIs, services, database‑backed applications, and system integrations.
• Ability to choose appropriate design patterns and decompose complex systems into maintainable components.
• Understanding of SaaS and cloud‑based architectures, including the tradeoffs involved in designing for scale, reliability, performance, and cost.
• Experience using operational and engineering metrics to understand system health and improve software quality.
• Ability to diagnose complex system‑level problems and partner effectively with operations and other engineering teams.
• Strong technical judgment and the ability to balance ideal solutions with practical delivery needs.
• Ability to identify technical risks, dependencies, and gaps in requirements early and propose practical solutions.
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• A collaborative approach to engineering and a track record of making the engineers around you stronger.
• Curiosity about emerging technologies and the ability to identify opportunities that improve our platform, engineering efficiency, or the student experience.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent relevant professional experience.
• 6+ years of professional software development experience, including experience introducing or advancing engineering approaches and technologies.
• Experience developing web applications and web services using technologies such as Java, REST APIs, ServiceNow, databases, and third‑party integrations.
• Demonstrated experience writing and maintaining automated tests, including unit, integration, API, and/or end‑to‑end tests, as an integrated part of software development.
• Equivalent relevant experience may substitute for formal education requirements. Generally, one year of relevant experience may substitute for one year of education, at the discretion of the hiring manager.

Preferred Qualifications

• Java or another modern object‑oriented programming language
• REST APIs and service‑oriented architectures
• JavaScript and TypeScript
• SQL and relational databases
• Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, or similar UI automation frameworks
• API testing approaches and tools such as Playwright API testing, Postman, REST Assured, or contract testing
• Performance and load testing with tools such as JMeter or BlazeMeter
• CI/CD pipelines and automated quality gates
• Observability and application‑performance tools such as Dynatrace
• Cloud‑native development, particularly AWS Modernization or migration of on‑premises applications to cloud environments
• Integration with legacy or enterprise systems ServiceNow, IDM/OSSO, Hibernate/Seam, Banner, J2EE, or Java EE
• IntelliJ IDEA, VS Code, Jira, and Git
• Agile/Scrum development environments
• Relevant technical certifications
• Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field

What Success Looks Like

You’ll succeed in this role by becoming a trusted technical voice on the team: someone who can take an ambiguous problem, turn it into a strong technical approach, build and validate the solution, and confidently support it in production. You’ll help the team move beyond simply shipping features toward building software that is reliable, observable, testable, scalable, and easier for the next engineer to work with. Just as importantly, you’ll multiply your impact by sharing what you know and helping other engineers make better technical decisions.

Visa Sponsorship

While we welcome applicants from all backgrounds, WGU is not able to provide visa sponsorship for this role.

Job Description Disclaimer

This position description outlines the major duties, responsibilities, requirements, and working conditions of the role. It is intended to accurately reflect the current position; however, responsibilities may evolve as organizational needs change. Other job‑related responsibilities may be assigned as appropriate.

Position & Application Details

Full‑Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full‑time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

Accommodations

Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at [e-mail].

Equal Employment Opportunity

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.