Staff Software Engineer, Growth

Workiva is the platform designed to bring confidence, control, and a competitive edge to the world’s most complex organizations. They are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the design, development, and scaling of AI-powered applications and agent-driven experiences built on the Workiva platform. This role involves defining architecture, guiding technical strategy, and making high-impact contributions to products.

Responsibilities:

• Drive 0→1 product development and iteration
• Build and iterate on new AI-powered product concepts from prototype to production, using rapid feedback loops to validate and refine ideas. You will be building a lot
• Partner closely with Product and Design to shape problem definition, test hypotheses, and evolve solutions based on user and business impact
• Make pragmatic trade-offs between speed and scalability, knowing when to optimize for learning versus long-term durability
• Own architecture, and scale what works
• Define and evolve architecture for emerging products, enabling a path from early experiments to reliable, scalable systems
• Lead technical discovery and implementation for ambiguous, high-impact initiatives that span multiple systems
• Establish patterns, frameworks, and guardrails that allow teams to move quickly without sacrificing quality
• Act as a technical force multiplier
• Set a high bar for code quality, system design, and operational excellence while maintaining a bias toward action and delivery
• Unblock teams, navigate cross-team dependencies, and drive alignment in fast-moving, evolving problem spaces
• Identify technical risks early and shape the roadmap to support both near-term delivery and long-term sustainability, again with heavy influence from AI
• Lead and influence across teams
• Mentor engineers and provide technical guidance across projects and teams
• Collaborate with Product, UX, and stakeholders to align on priorities, trade-offs, and outcomes
• Contribute to a culture of experimentation, learning, and continuous improvement

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, with a track record of delivering complex systems or products from concept to production
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience
• Strong experience with one or more of: TypeScript, Java/Kotlin, Go, or similar modern languages, along with relational databases such as Postgres and noSQL solutions like MongoDB
• Experience building and shipping AI-powered features, such as LLM integrations, copilots, or agent-based workflows, in customer-facing applications
• Familiarity with AI development platforms and tools such as OpenAI, Claude, Cursor, or similar
• Proven ability to operate in ambiguous environments and drive solutions from early-stage ideas to production systems
• Strong systems design skills, with the ability to balance rapid iteration and long-term scalability
• Experience influencing technical direction beyond your immediate team
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to navigate trade-offs and align stakeholders
• A proactive, product-minded approach with a passion for building and learning
• Experience with AWS or similar cloud platforms and modern SaaS architectures