Position Overview
Western Governors University is recruiting a Staff Software Engineer – Developer Experience in Salt Lake City, Utah. This is a senior technical leadership role focused on internal platforms, developer tooling and the systems that help WGU engineering teams build, test and deploy software more efficiently.
The role is full-time and regular, classified for 40 standard weekly hours. WGU lists a salary range of $161,000 to $249,500 per year, Technical Grade 411. The official Workday listing shows an application end date of August 24, 2026.
The successful engineer will influence developer experience across the organization by improving backend platforms, CI/CD systems, deployment automation, observability and self-service engineering tools. The position also includes mentoring and architecture leadership across multiple teams.
NB: WGU requires substantial senior-level experience for this role. The listing calls for at least 10 years of professional software engineering experience.
Minimum Requirements
Required qualifications include:
- 10+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Deep backend-development expertise with Java and/or Python
- Experience building internal platforms, developer tooling or large-scale infrastructure systems
- Strong distributed-systems, microservices and API-design knowledge
- Experience designing and scaling CI/CD and software-delivery pipelines
- Strong understanding of AWS, Azure or GCP
- Production experience with Docker and Kubernetes
- Experience building and operating high-reliability backend services
- Familiarity with Angular and TypeScript integration for internal tools
- Experience with relational and NoSQL databases
- Strong systems thinking, communication and technical leadership
Preferred experience includes:
- Staff or Principal-level platform engineering or DevEx roles
- Developer portals or internal PaaS platforms
- Event-driven architecture and message queues
- API gateways, GraphQL or service mesh
- Observability platforms and SRE practices
- Infrastructure as code such as Terraform
- Large monorepo or multi-team engineering environments
- Release engineering or build-system optimization
Tip: Your resume should show organization-level impact: faster deployments, improved reliability, reduced developer friction or platform adoption—not only individual feature delivery.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead architecture and development of internal developer platforms
- Define technical strategy for developer experience
- Design scalable backend services and APIs using Java and Python
- Establish engineering standards and platform patterns
- Partner with DevOps and platform teams on cloud-native delivery
- Improve observability, monitoring, logging and diagnostics
- Build self-service provisioning, environment and deployment tools
- Identify and remove systemic software-delivery bottlenecks
- Lead cross-team engineering-velocity and reliability initiatives
- Mentor senior and mid-level engineers
- Influence the long-term platform roadmap and technical strategy
What You Will Gain
- Enterprise-scale platform-engineering leadership
- Influence over how hundreds of engineers build and ship software
- Experience with modern cloud-native architecture
- Ownership of developer-productivity and reliability improvements
- Mission-driven technology work in higher education
- Bonus eligibility and comprehensive health benefits
- Retirement savings, discounted WGU tuition and flexible paid leave
Application Process
How to Apply
Submit an online application through WGU Workday for requisition JR-025290 before August 24, 2026.
- Use a senior-engineering resume focused on architecture and platform impact
- Show 10+ years of professional engineering experience clearly
- Highlight Java/Python backend systems
- Include CI/CD, Kubernetes, cloud and infrastructure work
- Quantify reliability, deployment-speed or productivity improvements
- Show mentoring and cross-team technical leadership
Applications Closed
The closing date for this opportunity was 24 August 2026.
Tip: WGU describes this as a Staff-level leadership role. Include examples where you influenced standards or architecture beyond your immediate team.
FAQ
Where is the WGU job located?
The position is listed in Salt Lake City, Utah.
What is the salary range?
WGU lists $161,000 to $249,500 per year.
How much experience is required?
At least 10 years of professional software engineering experience is required.
Which programming languages are important?
The listing requires deep backend expertise with Java and/or Python.
What cloud and infrastructure experience is expected?
Candidates should understand AWS, Azure or GCP and have production experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
When does the application close?
The official listing shows August 24, 2026.