Sr. Staff Software Engineer (Agentic AI)

Why UKG:  

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.

 ***UKG is unable to offer sponsorship for this position.***

Sr. Staff Software Engineer - Agentic Acceleration Group 

We are seeking an exceptional Sr. Staff Software Engineer to define and drive our enterprise-wide agentic AI strategy on Google's Agent Development Kit (ADK) and other agentic platforms. You will shape the future of intelligent automation across UKG's product portfolio, influence technical direction across multiple engineering organizations, and establish UKG as a thought leader in enterprise agentic AI. As a Sr. Staff Engineer, you will set technical vision, architect organization-wide systems, drive transformational change, and elevate engineering excellence company-wide.
Responsibilities:
• Strategic Technical Leadership: Define enterprise-wide technical strategy for agentic AI across UKG. Set long-term vision for how agents transform UKG's HCM platform. Influence product roadmaps and business strategy through technical insight. Drive division-level or company-level objectives.
• Enterprise Architecture: Architect organization-wide agentic AI capabilities on Google ADK and other platforms. Design foundational frameworks, orchestration patterns, and platform capabilities that serve multiple product teams. Set architectural standards and best practices for agent development across the organization.
• Cross-Organizational Influence: Drive technical decisions across multiple teams and divisions. Set standards for agent development, tool design, safety frameworks, and operational excellence. Shape engineering culture and technical direction at scale.
• Advanced Agent Systems: Pioneer sophisticated multi-agent architectures including hierarchical systems, swarm intelligence, adversarial networks, and hybrid human-agent workflows. Push boundaries of what's possible with agent orchestration. Demonstrate engineering excellence through industry-leading implementations.
• Innovation & Research: Stay at the forefront of agentic AI research. Evaluate emerging platforms and techniques. Prototype breakthrough capabilities. Drive adoption of transformative technologies. Contribute to industry knowledge through publications, open source, or conference presentations.
• Agent Safety & Governance: Establish organization-wide frameworks for agent safety, governance, and responsible AI. Design policy engines and guardrail architectures that scale across all systems. Influence company-wide AI safety policy and regulatory compliance standards.
• Platform Integration: Design integrations between agents and UKG's entire enterprise ecosystem. Build strategic tools, APIs, and MCP servers that unlock capabilities across products. Define integration patterns that scale across teams and product lines.
• Service Excellence: Define service health, quality, and operational standards for all agentic systems. Establish monitoring, observability, and incident response frameworks. Set the bar for production excellence, reliability, and cost efficiency.
• Mentorship & Talent Development: Mentor senior engineers, lead engineers, and engineering managers. Raise the technical bar through code reviews, design reviews, and architectural guidance. Build the next generation of technical leaders. Recognized as go-to expert and trusted advisor.
• Thought Leadership: Represent UKG externally as a technical expert. Publish articles, present at conferences, contribute to open source, and engage with the AI engineering community. Establish UKG's technical reputation and attract top talent.
• Strategic Partnerships: Engage with technology partners (Google, Anthropic) to influence platform roadmaps. Represent UKG in technical advisory relationships. Leverage partnerships to drive internal innovation.
Qualifications:
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 10+ years of professional software development experience, with 3+ years building agentic AI systems or LLM-powered applications in production at scale.
• Deep expertise in Python, Java, C#, JavaScript, or TypeScript, with track record of setting coding standards and best practices.
• Proven experience architecting and building production agents using Google ADK, Anthropic Claude SDK, LangChain, LangGraph, or similar platforms.
• Expert-level understanding of prompt engineering, context engineering, and advanced agent design patterns (ReAct, Chain-of-Thought, constitutional AI, multi-agent collaboration).
• Track record of influencing technical direction across multiple teams or organizations. Demonstrated ability to set architectural standards and drive adoption.
• Proven ability to lead highly complex, cross-functional initiatives with significant business impact.
• Deep expertise with GCP (Vertex AI, Google ADK), Azure (Azure OpenAI), or AWS (Bedrock), and modern DevOps practices.
• Exceptional problem-solving skills, systems thinking, and ability to navigate complex technical and organizational challenges.
• Outstanding leadership, communication, and influence skills. Ability to drive technical decisions across senior stakeholders and executive audiences.
• Demonstrated track record of mentoring senior engineers and raising the technical bar across organizations.

Company Overview:

UKG is the Workforce Operating Platform that puts workforce understanding to work. With the world's largest collection of workforce insights, and people-first AI, our ability to reveal unseen ways to build trust, amplify productivity, and empower talent, is unmatched. It's this expertise that equips our customers with the intelligence to solve any challenge in any industry — because great organizations know their workforce is their competitive edge. Learn more at ukg.com.

Equal Opportunity Employer   

UKG is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, disability, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, genetic information, and other legally protected categories.

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UKG participates in E-Verify. View the E-Verify posters here.  

It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability. 

Disability Accommodation in the Application and Interview Process

For individuals with disabilities that need additional assistance at any point in the application and interview process, please email [email protected]. 

The pay range for this position is $145,600 to $240,695. The actual base pay offered may vary depending on skills, experience, job-related knowledge and work location. In addition to base pay, employees may be eligible to participate in a performance-based bonus plan and to receive restricted stock unit awards as part of total compensation. Learn more about UKG’s benefits and rewards at https://www.ukg.com/about-us/careers/benefits