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 inn