Staff Software Engineer | Developer Experience

Job Type: Full time

Job Number: JR-025290

Location: Salt Lake City,
UT

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: $157,000.00 – $243,400.00

Job
Description

At Western Governors University, we are scaling our engineering organization by investing deeply in internal platforms,
developer tooling, and software delivery systems that accelerate how teams build, test, and deploy software. We’re seeking a Staff Software
Engineer to lead the design and evolution of these systems and help define the future of developer experience across the
organization.

This is a senior technical leadership role focused on backend systems and internal platforms. You will architect and
drive the development of core developer infrastructure-including CI/CD systems, internal APIs, service frameworks, automation tooling, and
developer-facing platforms that improve productivity and reliability at scale.

You will operate across teams and domains, influencing
architecture, engineering standards, and platform strategy while remaining hands-on in designing and building critical systems.

What
You’ll Do

• Lead the architecture and development of internal developer platforms, tooling, and backend
  services

  
  

• Define technical strategy for developer experience (DevEx), including CI/CD, build systems, and deployment
  automation

• Design and implement scalable backend services and APIs using Java and Python

  
  

• Establish engineering
  standards and patterns for internal tooling, service development, and platform integrations

• Partner with DevOps and platform
  teams to evolve infrastructure automation and cloud-native delivery systems

  
  

• Drive improvements in observability, monitoring,
  logging, and system diagnostics across engineering platforms

• Build and enhance self-service tooling for service provisioning,
  environments, and deployments

  
  

• Collaborate with engineering leadership to identify systemic bottlenecks in software delivery
  and resolve them through platform solutions

• Lead cross-team initiatives that improve engineering velocity, reliability, and
  operational efficiency

  
  

• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, providing architectural guidance and technical
  leadership

• Influence long-term platform roadmap and contribute to organizational engineering
  strategy

  
  

• Participate in design reviews, technical governance, and large-scale system planning

Required
Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience

• Deep expertise in backend development
  with Java and/or Python

  
  

• Proven experience building internal platforms, developer tooling, or large-scale infrastructure
  systems

• Strong background in distributed systems, microservices, and API design

  
  

• Experience designing and
  scaling CI/CD systems and software delivery pipelines

• Strong understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or
  GCP)

  
  

• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes in production environments

• Experience building and operating
  high-reliability backend services

  
  

• Familiarity with frontend integration using Angular and TypeScript for internal
  tools

• Experience with relational and NoSQL databases

  
  

• Strong systems thinking and ability to operate across
  multiple technical domains

• Proven ability to influence without authority across engineering
  organizations

  
  

• Excellent communication skills and technical leadership capabilities

Preferred
Qualifications

• Experience in Staff or Principal-level roles in platform engineering or DevEx
  organizations

• Experience building developer portals, internal PaaS systems, or self-service
  infrastructure

  
  

• Strong experience with event-driven architectures and message queues

• Experience with API
  gateways, GraphQL, or service mesh technologies

  
  

• Deep knowledge of observability platforms and SRE
  practices

• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or similar)

  
  

• Experience improving large-scale
  monorepos or multi-team engineering environments

• Background in release engineering or build system
  optimization

  
  

• Passion for improving developer productivity at organizational scale

What Success Looks
Like

• Engineering teams across the organization ship faster with reduced friction

• CI/CD and release systems are
  reliable, scalable, and largely self-service

  
  

• Developer experience improvements measurably increase engineering
  productivity

• Internal platforms reduce operational burden and eliminate repetitive engineering
  work

  
  

• Observability and system insight are standardized across services

• Strong alignment between platform
  engineering and product engineering teams

  
  

• Architectural consistency and engineering standards improve across the
  organization

• Staff engineer leadership raises the technical bar across multiple teams

  
  

Why Join Us?

• Opportunity to define and scale internal developer platforms at enterprise level

  
  

• High-impact role shaping how
  hundreds of engineers build and ship software

• Modern cloud-native architecture with strong investment in platform
  engineering

  
  

• Collaborative, engineering-led culture with autonomy and technical ownership

• Competitive
  compensation and comprehensive benefits

  
  

• Flexible work environment

• Significant influence over technical
  direction and engineering strategy

  
  

• Mission-driven organization expanding access to education through technology

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.

How to Apply: If
interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in
Workday.

Additional Information

Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and
requirements of the job. It’s not all-inclusive.

Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or
accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at recruiting@wgu.edu.

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

Tagged as: Employment