Staff 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 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.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Lead in the building of cutting-edge applications and services to increase and improve the student experience.

• Exemplify a mastery of coding excellence and software quality, mentoring others and pioneering new standards and architectural foundations.

• Foster and utilize innovative approaches to problems and functionality for all key stakeholders.

• Own technologies focusing on student success and scalability while supporting student-focused user experience.

• Collaborate with developers, designers, testing, and product management to develop features and innovative approaches to applications and features.

• May mentor/advise engineering teams on new languages and technologies; act as a resident expert when needed.

• Establish a balance between strategic planning and initiatives with development, communication, troubleshooting, and problem solving.

• Lead in the prototyping and development of new technology and framework, improving the student experience.

• Identify system redundancies and inefficiencies, proposing innovative and cost-effective solutions.

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and the ability to work equally well in self-managed and team-based Agile projects.

• Work with internal customers to gather business processes and project requirements.

• Performs other related duties as assigned.

Knowledge, Skill and Abilities:

• Demonstrated ability to establish innovative system frameworks.

• Demonstrated ability to implement and manage an API Framework.

Competencies: 

Organizational or Student Impact:

• Recommends and implements changes in technical/business processes; identifies areas for improvement.

• Helps lead/coordinate extremely complex technical projects and programs and leads development and implementation of innovative solutions for specialized technical issues.

• Works proactively; identifies and helps prevent/ solve problems that may cross disciplines.

• Fully understands and quantifies project risks with impact. Identifies, generates, and implements innovative solutions.

Problem Solving & Decision Making:

• This individual accomplishes goals and objectives independently.

• Builds and leads teams, influencing decisions and results.

• Uses discretion to fully scope, design, and implement solutions to complex technical problems.

• The individual provides regular technical advice and direction to technical teams and management.

• Models and helps set high standards for effective interactions with internal and external individuals.

Communication & Influence:

• Communicates with parties within and outside of their job function and typically has responsibilities for communicating with parties external to the organization.

• Works to influence others to accept and understand new concepts, practices, and approaches. Requires ability to communicate with executive leadership regarding matters of significant importance to the organization.

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