Senior Software Engineer (AI-First, Full-Stack, AWS, Kubernetes)

Western Governors University is committed to expanding access to higher education through innovative online programs. They are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to lead technical discovery efforts and develop AI-powered applications using AWS and Kubernetes, while collaborating with product, design, and engineering teams.

Responsibilities:

• Lead research and discovery for complex, ambiguous problem spaces through architectural spikes, prototypes, and proof‑of‑concepts
• Evaluate new technologies, AWS services, Kubernetes patterns, and AI capabilities
• Perform build‑vs‑buy and managed‑service vs. self‑managed tradeoff analyses
• Translate findings into clear architectural direction and implementation plans
• Design, implement, and evaluate AI‑powered features using Large Language Models
• Apply prompt engineering, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), and agent‑based workflows
• Design AI systems that account for latency, cost, reliability, observability, and safety
• Deploy AI services in containerized environments and integrate them with cloud‑native infrastructure
• Stay current with applied AI/LLM advancements and production best practices
• Own features end‑to‑end, from frontend experiences to backend services and data layers
• Build modern, responsive user interfaces using Angular, or similar frameworks
• Design and implement scalable backend services and APIs
• Ensure solutions meet high standards for performance, reliability, security, and maintainability
• Design, deploy, and operate cloud‑native systems on AWS using Kubernetes
• Build and operate containerized workloads using Docker and Kubernetes (EKS or equivalent)
• Design Kubernetes deployments, services, ingress, autoscaling, and resource management strategies
• Implement secure, highly available architectures using AWS and Kubernetes best practices
• Apply Infrastructure as Code using tools such as Terraform and Helm
• Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize distributed systems using cloud and Kubernetes observability tools
• Design and maintain CI/CD pipelines that build, test, and deploy containerized applications
• Support zero‑downtime deployments and safe rollout strategies (e.g., blue/green, canary)
• Participate in on‑call rotations and incident response for production systems
• Drive improvements in reliability, scalability, and developer experience
• Provide technical leadership on projects and guide architectural decisions
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, code reviews, and hands‑on collaboration
• Partner with product managers and designers to align technical solutions with user needs
• Communicate clearly about technical tradeoffs, risks, and system behavior

Requirements:

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience
• Bachelor's Degree - equivalent relevant experience performing the essential functions of this job may substitute for education degree requirements
• Strong proficiency in a modern backend language (e.g., Java, Kotlin, Python, or similar)
• Strong frontend experience with Angular, or equivalent frameworks
• Significant experience building and operating production systems on AWS
• Hands‑on experience deploying and managing applications on Kubernetes
• Proven ability to work in ambiguous problem spaces and drive clarity via research and experimentation
• Experience building or integrating AI‑powered features using Large Language Models
• Experience with Kubernetes fundamentals: pods, deployments, services, ingress, and autoscaling
• Experience running production workloads on EKS or comparable Kubernetes platforms
• Familiarity with container security, resource optimization, and operational best practices
• Experience debugging and operating distributed systems in containerized environments
• Experience with prompt design, evaluation, and iterative experimentation
• Familiarity with RAG architectures, tool‑using agents, or workflow orchestration
• Ability to reason critically about AI behavior rather than treating models as black boxes
• Experience building SaaS or platform products using AWS and Kubernetes
• Experience with service meshes, event‑driven architectures, or workflow orchestration
• Experience influencing technical strategy or platform architecture
• Prior experience mentoring engineers or leading cross‑team initiatives