Senior Software Engineer - Academy

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 410 Pay Range: $143,700.00 - $222,700.00 Job Description The Senior Software Engineer is responsible for the research, design, development, analysis, testing, and implementation of software operating or application systems. They communicate project information to client, project manager, or other design personnel working on projects. They maintain good working relationships with clients and staff. They write and maintains complete documentation. They support team members and ensures established goals and deadlines are met. They keep management informed of status and significant problems.   What You'll Do Design and Build High-Impact Software Design, develop, test, and deploy scalable software solutions that support critical business and student-facing capabilities. Transform business, functional, and non-functional requirements into maintainable, high-quality software. Drive technical excellence through thoughtful architecture, design patterns, security best practices, and fault-tolerant system design. Continuously improve application performance, reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency. Lead Through Technical Expertise Serve as a technical leader and trusted advisor within your engineering team. Influence architectural decisions and help define technical strategy across projects and platforms. Identify technical risks, dependencies, and scalability concerns early while proposing practical solutions. Act as a subject matter expert in one or more domains and collaborate across teams to solve complex challenges. Mentor and Elevate the Team Coach and mentor engineers through design reviews, pair programming, architecture discussions, and code reviews. Share knowledge through technical presentations, documentation, and engineering best practices. Help create an inclusive, collaborative engineering culture focused on continuous learning and growth. Build Reliable Cloud-Native Systems Design systems with operational excellence in mind, including observability, resilience, security, and cost optimization. Partner closely with DevOps and Operations teams to improve reliability and reduce service disruptions. Lead root cause analysis efforts and accelerate recovery during production incidents. Drive Continuous Improvement Champion modern engineering practices, automation, and quality-focused development approaches. Help evaluate emerging technologies and identify opportunities to improve developer productivity and platform capabilities. Contribute to improvements in engineering processes, platform health, and team effectiveness. What We're Looking For Technical Skills Strong software engineering fundamentals including system design, algorithms, software architecture, testing, security, and distributed systems. Experience building modern web applications, APIs, and service-oriented architectures. Proficiency in or another modern object-oriented programming language. Experience developing RESTful services and integrating with databases and third-party systems. Deep understanding of software development lifecycle methodologies and Agile development practices. Experience designing and operating applications in cloud environments, preferably AWS. Knowledge of scalability, resiliency, observability, and performance optimization best practices. Strong understanding of data-driven engineering and the use of metrics to guide decisions. Leadership & Collaboration Ability to influence technical direction without relying on authority. Strong communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Experience mentoring engineers and helping teams grow their technical capabilities. Proven ability to balance speed, quality, and business priorities while delivering results. Minimum Qualifications Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. 6+ years of professional software development experience. Experience building and supporting web applications, APIs, and enterprise software solutions. Experience with J avascript, Nest.js and Python services, databases, and systems integration. Demonstrated success delivering production software from design through deployment and support. Equivalent experience may be substituted for education requirements. Preferred Qualifications Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field. Experience modernizing legacy applications and architectures. Experience with: JavaScript, Nest.js Python SQL ServiceNow Git Jira EDA Confluent/Kafka/Pulsar Backend-for-Frontend patterns Mesh of Mesh Spec