Principal Software Engineer-Student LifeCycle Services

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 412 Pay Range: $ - $

Job Description The Principal Software Engineer is a position of technical expertise, influence, and leadership in the technology realm. The position will be required to apply their expert knowledge to ensure best practices and well-engineered architecture across the University. They will also be a key stakeholder and initiator of major changes to processes, engineering practices, and system administration. This position will be required to work in a space of solving critical issues and initiatives across multiple departments.

It will require an extensive and deep understanding of cutting‑edge practices and innovative approaches to problems. Principal Software Engineers are also tasked with establishing and maintaining a positive and productive culture based on the WGU Leadership Principles.

Principal Software Engineer Shape the Future of Education Through Technology At WGU, technology is at the heart of transforming higher education. As a Principal Software Engineer, you will serve as one of the organization’s foremost technical leaders, influencing the architecture, scalability, reliability, and future direction of a platform that empowers hundreds of thousands of students on their educational journey. This is not a role focused on day‑to‑day feature delivery.

It is an opportunity to solve complex, organization‑wide engineering challenges, define technical strategy across multiple product and engineering domains, and elevate the capabilities of an entire engineering organization. You will partner with senior engineering leaders, product executives, and business stakeholders to drive innovation, establish architectural direction, and create technology solutions that scale for the future. If you are passionate about distributed systems, modern cloud architecture, technical leadership, engineering excellence, and mentoring the next generation of technical talent, we’d love to meet you.

• Lead Architecture Across the Enterprise
• Define and evolve architecture strategies that span multiple engineering teams, products, and technology domains.
• Drive the design of scalable, resilient, secure, and maintainable systems that support WGU’s mission‑critical education platform.
• Identify opportunities to simplify and modernize existing systems while reducing operational complexity and technical debt.
• Establish architectural standards, design patterns, and engineering best practices that improve consistency and…