Senior Principal Software Engineer

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 413

Pay Range: $197,000.00 - $305,300.00

Job Description

Job Duties

• Coordinates with executive team on strategy and long-term road map for cutting-edge applications and services to increase and improve the student experience.
• Helps achieve higher levels of maturity and delivery of business value via improved communication across the idea intake process.
• Develops and grooms the idea and product prioritization process and fosters a culture of accountability for on time product delivery, product quality, cost, and operations.
• Fosters and utilizes innovative approaches to problems and functionality that focuses on students and all key stakeholders.
• Owns technologies focusing on student success and scalability while supporting a student-focused user experience.
• Mentors and advises engineering teams on new languages and technologies; acts as a resident expert when needed.
• Directly intakes ideas originating from university leadership and manages those relationships.
• Provides leadership and direction for the software engineering group across the University.
• Clearly communicates the product strategy to the executive team, exposing risks and trade-offs.
• Acts as a key stakeholder in the evaluation of potential technologies for use within the enterprise.
• Evaluates new tools and technologies, creates prototypes and proofs of concept, and shares the results with peers.
• Works with internal customers to gather business processes and project requirements.
• Performs other job-related duties as assigned.

KSAs

• Expert understanding of the processes associated with software development, including Planning, Measurement, Coding, Testing, Reuse, Tools, Abstraction, Algorithms and Complexity, Security, and basic system understanding.
• Ability to employ the tools and techniques related to an engineering discipline, such as database management, user interface development, inter-process communications, etc.
• Ability to create designs that can be realized in code that achieve functional and non-functional requirements of the system. Appropriately uses design patterns, system decomposition, security, and fault tolerance. A demonstrated capability in one or more design methodologies, such as Object-oriented design, Function-oriented design, data centered design and the notations appropriate for each.
• Ability to understand differences, strengths and weaknesses of various Software Development Life Cycle models, and practical considerations of options
• Understands implications of Software as a Service in the creation of software systems. Thinks of and designs for scale, reliability, and cost in a public cloud environment. Uses data and metrics to analyze Key Performance Indicators.
• Ability to explain the basic value of a system and subsystems to users and how the various subsystems inter-operate to provide features. Able to act as a partner with Operations in solving platform problems at a system level. Knows what the system can and cannot do.
• Ability to demonstrate a sense of urgency when looking for solutions to problems
• Understands the general higher education landscape, particularly with on-line higher education, including competitive landscape, opportunities, and feature gaps.
• Ability to identify innovative ideas or technologies that represent opportunities to advance the capabilities of the university education platform, our