Lead Software Development Engineer

At UKG, the work you do matters. The code you ship, the decisions you make, and the care you show a customer all add up to real impact. Today, tens of millions of workers start and end their days with our workforce operating platform. Helping people get paid, grow in their careers, and shape the future of their industries. That's what we do.

We never stop learning. We never stop challenging the norm. We push for better, and we celebrate the wins along the way. Here, you'll get flexibility that’s real, benefits you can count on, and a team that succeeds together. Because at UKG, your work matters - and so do you.

As a Lead Software Development Engineer at UKG, you will provide technical leadership in the design, development, and deployment of our next-generation, highly scalable, AI-native enterprise platforms. This pivotal role sits at the intersection of core cloud-native backend systems, advanced customer experience (CX) platforms, and Salesforce ecosystem integrations. You will play a defining role in designing systems that blend traditional enterprise workflows with Agentic AI, large language models (LLMs), and intelligent orchestration to power platforms at a massive global scale.

This role requires a unique blend of deep, hands‑on technical expertise, systems thinking, and strategic influence. You will champion engineering excellence, mentor senior talent, guide critical architectural decisions, and collaborate closely with product, business, and AI/ML teams to translate complex business objectives into resilient, secure, and highly performant platform solutions.

Design Scalable Backends:
Lead the system design and evolution of highly scalable, secure, and distributed services, and API platforms capable of handling high-volume transaction loads.

AI & Agentic Orchestration:
Drive the integration of LLM-based services and autonomous Agentic AI frameworks into the core product architecture, ensuring low latency, high availability, and seamless tool/workflow orchestration.

CRM & Salesforce Integration:
Design and optimize enterprise‑grade integration patterns between UKG platforms and Salesforce, ensuring highly secure, real‑time data flows and robust linkages.

High-Volume Data & Migration:
Build and optimize complex data integration layers, and resilient data migration pipelines that support business domains.

Observability & Resilience:
Establish rigorous standards for system observability, monitoring, alerting, proactive rate‑limiting, and resource management to prevent production bottlenecks and ensure high‑availability SLAs.

Security & Governance:
Drive rigorous standards for data privacy, compliance, and secure API structures across all distributed systems.

Cross-Functional Influence:
Conduct technical reviews, facilitate collaborative design sessions across backend and AI/ML teams, and influence technical direction across large, multi-disciplinary organizations.

Years of

Experience:

7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a track record of design ownership over complex, distributed, and highly available enterprise systems.

Systems Architecture: Deep expertise in backend system design, RESTful/gRPC APIs, event-driven architectures and enterprise system design patterns.

AI Integration: Hands‑on experience integrating, scaling, and product ionizing AI/ML applications, LLM APIs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, or agentic frameworks into existing software ecosystems.

Salesforce & Enterprise Ecosystems: Proven experience designing systems that interface deeply with…