Sr. Staff Software Engineer- Eng
UKG · Seattle, WA
$145,600–$240,695from the description
Jul 10, 2026
Seattle, WA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior individual-contributor engineering role focused on the foundational layer of an HCM SaaS platform, where the work centers on architecting and delivering shared services, APIs, and platform libraries consumed by HR, recruiting, payroll, and benefits products. The position involves hands-on coding alongside cross-team technical leadership, setting architectural standards, driving modernization of distributed systems, and integrating AI tooling into engineering workflows. It suits an experienced engineer with a background in scalable cloud-native platform development and a track record of influencing technical direction across multiple teams.
Staff level · 8+ years · Remote · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 4,950 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 3,000–7,500
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $138,970 (middle half $107,524–$175,762). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (9)
The job title is 'Sr. Staff Software Engineer,' which UKG appears to use as a single level above Staff; it has been mapped to Staff seniority given the cross-team architectural scope described, which clearly exceeds a typical Senior IC role.
No specific work location is stated in the posting; the pay range and UKG's general remote-friendly policy suggest this is a remote-eligible US role, but no city or CBSA could be confirmed.
A Bachelor's degree in CS or related field is listed in Qualifications but is immediately qualified with 'or equivalent experience,' so no hard degree requirement is set.
GCP is listed in the Qualifications section but explicitly flagged as 'preferred,' so it is marked as preferred rather than required.
AI/ML tools and observability/SRE practices appear only under Preferred Qualifications and are marked accordingly.
Kafka and RabbitMQ are presented as interchangeable examples of messaging system experience ('such as Kafka or RabbitMQ'); they are captured as a single requirement with RabbitMQ as the alternative.
Design patterns, OOP, BDD, TDD, and secure engineering are listed as required but name no specific tool or technology, so they are omitted from the skills list per extraction rules.
Ignored 2 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): API design, SRE practices.
This posting reads as a fully-remote role, so it was scored against the national candidate pool rather than a single metro.
Read the full posting
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