Staff Software Engineer | Developer Experience
United States of America
Full Time
3 weeks ago
$157,000 - $243,000 USD
H1B Sponsor Likely
Key skills
JavaPythonBackend developmentInternal platformsDeveloper toolingDistributed systemsMicroservicesAPI designCI/CD systemsSoftware delivery pipelinesCloud platforms - AWSCloud platforms - AzureCloud platforms - GCPDockerKubernetesFrontend integration - AngularFrontend integration - TypeScriptRelational databasesNoSQL databasesEvent-driven architecturesMessage queuesAPI gatewaysGraphQLService mesh technologiesObservability platformsSRE practicesInfrastructure-as-code - TerraformTypeScriptNoSQLAngularAWSAzureGCPTerraformService MeshCI/CDLeadershipCommunication
About this role
Western Governors University is committed to expanding access to higher education through innovative online degree programs. They are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the design and development of internal developer platforms and tooling that enhance the software delivery process across the organization.
Responsibilities:
- Lead the architecture and development of internal developer platforms, tooling, and backend services
- Define technical strategy for developer experience (DevEx), including CI/CD, build systems, and deployment automation
- Design and implement scalable backend services and APIs using Java and Python
- Establish engineering standards and patterns for internal tooling, service development, and platform integrations
- Partner with DevOps and platform teams to evolve infrastructure automation and cloud-native delivery systems
- Drive improvements in observability, monitoring, logging, and system diagnostics across engineering platforms
- Build and enhance self-service tooling for service provisioning, environments, and deployments
- Collaborate with engineering leadership to identify systemic bottlenecks in software delivery and resolve them through platform solutions
- Lead cross-team initiatives that improve engineering velocity, reliability, and operational efficiency
- Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, providing architectural guidance and technical leadership
- Influence long-term platform roadmap and contribute to organizational engineering strategy
- Participate in design reviews, technical governance, and large-scale system planning
Requirements:
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Deep expertise in backend development with Java and/or Python
- Proven experience building internal platforms, developer tooling, or large-scale infrastructure systems
- Strong background in distributed systems, microservices, and API design
- Experience designing and scaling CI/CD systems and software delivery pipelines
- Strong understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
- Experience with Docker and Kubernetes in production environments
- Experience building and operating high-reliability backend services
- Familiarity with frontend integration using Angular and TypeScript for internal tools
- Experience with relational and NoSQL databases
- Strong systems thinking and ability to operate across multiple technical domains
- Proven ability to influence without authority across engineering organizations
- Excellent communication skills and technical leadership capabilities
- Experience in Staff or Principal-level roles in platform engineering or DevEx organizations
- Experience building developer portals, internal PaaS systems, or self-service infrastructure
- Strong experience with event-driven architectures and message queues
- Experience with API gateways, GraphQL, or service mesh technologies
- Deep knowledge of observability platforms and SRE practices
- Experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or similar)
- Experience improving large-scale monorepos or multi-team engineering environments
- Background in release engineering or build system optimization
- Passion for improving developer productivity at organizational scale