Staff Software Engineer | Cloud Platform

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 411

Pay Range: $161,000.00 - $249,500.00

Job Description

The Staff Software Engineer is a position of technical expertise, influence, and leadership in the technology realm. The position will be required to apply their expert knowledge to ensure best practices and well-engineered architecture across the department. They will also be a key stakeholder and initiator of major changes to processes, engineering practices, and system administration. This position will be required to work in a space of solving critical issues and initiatives across multiple teams. It will require an extensive and deep understanding of cutting-edge practices and innovative approaches to problems. Principal Software Engineers are also tasked with establishing and maintaining a positive and productive culture based on the WGU Leadership Principles.

 

What You'll Do

Cloud Platform Engineering

• Design and develop cloud-native platforms and services that support enterprise software delivery.

• Build reusable platform capabilities using Go, Python, and Java.

• Develop Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform to provision and manage AWS resources.

• Design and implement GitOps deployment strategies using Argo CD.

• Develop cloud solutions that improve resiliency, security, observability, and operational efficiency.

• Design highly available and fault-tolerant distributed systems running in AWS.

Software Engineering

• Design, develop, test, and maintain production software using Go (Golang), Python, and Java.

• Build REST APIs, backend services, automation tools, and event-driven applications.

• Develop internal platform services supporting cloud operations, deployments, and infrastructure management.

• Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code following modern software engineering practices.

• Contribute to shared libraries, automation frameworks, and platform tooling.

AWS & Cloud Architecture

• Design and implement solutions utilizing AWS services including:

  • EKS

  • ECS

  • EC2

  • Lambda

  • Fargate

  • IAM

  • CloudWatch

  • S3

• Develop Kubernetes-based platforms supporting enterprise workloads.

• Build secure, scalable cloud-native architectures using Infrastructure as Code.

• Collaborate with infrastructure teams to optimize cloud performance, cost, and operational maturity.

Infrastructure Automation & GitOps

• Build and maintain Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.

• Develop deployment automation using Argo CD and GitOps methodologies.

• Design reusable Kubernetes deployment patterns.

• Build CI/CD pipelines supporting automated testing, deployment, and infrastructure provisioning.

• Automate operational tasks to improve reliability and reduce manual effort.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field (or equivalent experience)

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience

• Strong experience developing software using Go (Golang) and Python

• Experience with Java and Spring Boot