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.***

Staff Software Engineer - Agentic Acceleration Group

We are seeking a highly experienced Staff Software Engineer to build and scale our agentic AI capabilities on Google's Agent Development Kit (ADK) and other enterprise agentic platforms. This role will provide you with the opportunity to work on cutting-edge agentic AI systems, intelligent automation workflows, and impactful projects that are used by enterprises and users worldwide. You will drive technical strategy for agent-powered features, lead large-scale agentic AI projects, and mentor engineers across the organization in modern agent development practices. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will be responsible for the design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of highly complex agentic systems built on established AI platforms.

Responsibilities:
• Agent Development: Design, build, and deploy production-grade AI agents using Google ADK and other agentic platforms (Anthropic Claude SDK, LangGraph, etc.). Write clean, maintainable, and efficient code for agent workflows, tool integrations, and multi-agent orchestration.
• Platform Integration: Build agents that integrate with enterprise systems through tools, APIs, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. Design and implement custom tools, skills, and plugins that extend agent capabilities across UKG's HCM platform.
• Technical Strategy: Drive the technical strategy and vision for agentic AI initiatives and major projects, ensuring alignment with business goals and industry best practices. Communicate complex agent architectures to non-technical stakeholders, anticipate potential objections, and influence others to adopt a point of view.
• Leadership: Lead cross-functional teams to design, develop, and deliver high-impact agent-powered projects on time and within budget. Coordinate activities and tasks of other team members, working independently and needing guidance only in the most complex situations.
• Architectural Excellence: Architect, design, and develop complex agentic systems and applications built on Google ADK and similar platforms, ensuring high standards of performance, scalability, and reliability. Design multi-agent coordination patterns, task delegation workflows, and agent communication protocols. Collaborate with architects on mid-level and high-level design.
• Service Health and Quality: Ensure the health and quality of agent-powered services, proactively identifying and addressing issues. Utilize service health indicators, agent performance metrics (task success rates, latency, cost), and telemetry for action. Conduct thorough root cause analysis for agent failures and implement measures to prevent future recurrences.
• Agent Operations: Oversee agent deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management. Implement best practices for agent versioning, cost monitoring, performance optimization, and iterative improvement. Build observability into agent workflows including execution tracing, decision logging, and failure analysis.
• Engineering Excellence Practices: Advocate for and implement best quality practices for agentic systems, hold a high bar for engineering excellence, and guide the team in maintaining service quality through comprehensive testing (including agent evaluation, prompt testing, tool validation).
• Testing: Build testable agents and agentic systems, define tests including agent evaluation and tool validation, automate tests using appropriate frameworks. Implement agent-specific testing strategies including prompt validation, multi-step workflow testing, tool invocation testing, and adversarial scenario testing.
• Mentorship: Provide technical mentorship and guidance on agent development, fostering a culture of learning and continuous improvement. Mentor junior engineers on building production-grade agents, designing tool integrations, and implementing agent safety practices.
• Innovation: Stay current with emerging agentic AI technologies and platforms (Google ADK, Anthropic Claude SDK, LangGraph, AutoGen, Crew AI), advocating for their adoption where appropriate to drive innovation and productivity enhancement within the team. Explore new agent capabilities, tool integrations, and orchestration patterns.

Qualifications:
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 7+ years of professional software development experience, with 2+ years building agentic AI systems or LLM-powered applications in production.
• Deep expertise in one or more programming languages such as Python, Java, C#, JavaScript, or TypeScript.
• Hands-on experience building production agents using platforms such as Google ADK, Anthropic Claude SDK, LangChain, LangGraph, or similar agentic frameworks.
• Experience designing and implementing multi-agent systems, agent orchestration patterns, and tool-use architectures.
• Strong understanding of prompt engineering, context engineering, and agent design patterns (ReAct, Chain-of-Thought, tool use, multi-agent collaboration).
• Experience integrating agents with enterprise systems through APIs, tools, and protocols (REST APIs, MCP, function calling).
• Extensive experience with software architecture and design patterns, including the ability to design and implement scalable, reliable agentic systems in a DevOps model.
• Proven track record of leading and delivering large-scale, complex software projects including agentic AI initiatives.
• Proficiency with cloud technologies like GCP (Vertex AI, Google ADK), Azure (Azure OpenAI), AWS (Bedrock), and version control systems like GitHub.
• Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail, with a commitment to delivering high-quality agent-powered solutions.
• Proficiency in building telemetry and observability for agentic systems (execution tracing, decision logging, cost monitoring, success rate tracking).
• Strong leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and drive agentic AI technical decisions across the organization and translate agent capabilities to non-technical stakeholders.

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 $129,500 to $214,000. 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