Staff Software Engineer - Academic Delivery

WGU; Salt Lake City (UT); On-site; USD 161,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

WGU is actively seeking a Staff Software Engineer to shape the future of education through technology. You will define technical direction, architecture, and engineering practices that enable us to scale, innovate, and deliver exceptional experiences across the university.

This high-impact leadership role involves solving complex problems, mentoring engineers, and guiding architecture across teams while balancing technical excellence with pragmatic delivery to maximize impact.

Qualifications

• Experience designing large-scale distributed systems.
• Strong knowledge of cloud-native architectures and platforms.
• Experience mentoring engineers and leading technical initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Drive Architecture and Technical Strategy across multiple teams.
• Lead design and evolution of scalable, secure, and highly available distributed systems.
• Partner with product, engineering, and security to define roadmaps and long-term tech strategies.
• Identify risks and gaps early, and develop proactive solutions.
• Mentor and develop engineers; promote engineering standards and best practices.

Skills

Distributed systems

Cloud architectures

Technical leadership

Mentorship

System reliability

Security

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 411

Pay Range: $161,000.00 - $249,500.00

Job Description

Shape the Future of Education Through Technology

At WGU, our technology powers life-changing educational experiences for hundreds of thousands of students. As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll play a critical role in defining the technical direction, architecture, and engineering practices that enable us to scale, innovate, and deliver exceptional experiences across the university.

This is a high-impact technical leadership role for an engineer who thrives on solving complex problems, influencing architecture across multiple teams, and driving engineering excellence. You'll work on strategic initiatives that span platforms, services, and business domains while helping teams adopt modern engineering practices, cloud technologies, and scalable system designs.

You’ll be trusted as a technical authority, mentor, and thought leader, helping guide some of the most important technology decisions at WGU. If you're passionate about building resilient systems, modernizing platforms, improving developer productivity, and mentoring engineers, we'd love to talk with you.

What You'll Do

Drive Architecture and Technical Strategy

Lead the design and evolution of scalable, secure, and highly available distributed systems.

Partner with engineering leaders, architects, and product teams to define technical roadmaps and long-term technology strategies.

Identify technical risks, architectural gaps, and system dependencies early, and proactively develop solutions.

Influence technology decisions across multiple teams and domains.

Solve Complex Technical Challenges

Serve as a subject matter expert across multiple engineering disciplines and platforms.

Lead the investigation and resolution of critical production issues and complex cross-team initiatives.

Evaluate emerging technologies, architectural patterns, and engineering practices to improve platform capabilities and efficiency.

Balance technical excellence with pragmatic delivery decisions to maximize business impact.

Elevate Engineering Excellence

Champion modern software engineering practices, including cloud-native architectures, automation, observability, testing strategies, and security.

Drive improvements in system reliability, performance, scalability, and operational excellence.

Establish and promote engineering standards, architectural best practices, and design principles.

Help teams optimize development processes and improve software delivery effectiveness.

Mentor and Develop Engineers

Provide technical leadership and mentorship to engineers across multiple teams.

Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, accountability, and continuous learning.

Support teams in adopting new technologies and expanding their technical capabilities.

Act as a trusted advisor and technical resource for engineers, managers, and leaders.

Partner Across the Organization

Collaborate with Product, Operations, Security, and Engineering teams to deliver business-critical solutions.

Translate complex technical concepts into actionable recommendations for technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Advocate for solutions that improve the experience of students, faculty, and staff.

What Makes You Successful

Technical Expertise

Deep understanding of software engineering principles, system architecture, and software development best practices.

Strong experience designing and building large-scale, distributed, and cloud-based applications.

Expertise in software design patterns, system decomposition, fault tolerance, security, and performance optimization.

Proven ability to design solutions that satisfy both functional and non-functional requirements.

Engi