Principal Software Engineer, Data Platform

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About the Role:

This staff level role leads the technical strategy and execution for a large-scale data platform built on Google Cloud. The platform transforms extensive customer datasets into advanced analytical outputs and derived metrics. As the most technically skilled engineer on the team, this person drives architectural direction, mentors engineers, and ensures the platform is secure, scalable, and reliable. The role includes close collaboration with a dedicated Data Science team that provides statistical methods and analytical models, which this engineer will help integrate and operationalize.

Key Responsibilities:

• Architect and evolve a cloud-native data platform using BigQuery, Dataflow, Dataform, Pub/Sub, Dataproc, Cloud Storage.

• Build scalable data ingestion, transformation, and aggregation pipelines that support high-volume HCM datasets.

• Collaborate with the Data Science team to operationalize their models, quantitative logic, and statistical frameworks-without owning statistical methodology design.

• Implement end-to-end data workflows that generate aggregated insights and derived metrics at scale.

• Engineer strong privacy, compliance, and anonymization mechanisms into all data pipelines (masking, thresholding, auditing).

• Translate analytical requirements into technical designs and execution plans in partnership with product and data stakeholders.

• Lead architecture reviews, performance tuning, cost optimization, and reliability engineering initiatives.

• Mentor engineers; guide design reviews, coding standards, and technical best practices.

• Troubleshoot complex issues involving distributed processing, data-quality anomalies, or system bottlenecks.

• Introduce new GCP tools or frameworks as needed to support long-term scalability and maintainability.

Basic Qualifications:

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years in senior or staff-level positions.

• Deep experience building distributed data systems using GCP services, including BigQuery, Dataflow (Beam), Dataform, and Pub/Sub.

• Strong programming skills in Python, Java, Scala, or similar languages used in data engineering.

• Strong understanding of data modeling, partitioning strategies, schema evolution, and cost-efficient query optimization.

• Experience designing security-first data pipelines with privacy-preserving transformations.

• Ability to break ambiguous problems into structured designs and actionable plans.

• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and influence technical direction across teams.

• Strong experience integrating data-science workflows or ML/analytical models into production systems.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with HCM, payroll, or other HR/enterprise data domains.

• Background supporting analytics-driven products, metrics systems, or derived-indicator pipelines.

• Experience using Dataform for SQL transformation management and production model organization.

• Familiarity with statistical concepts or time-series patterns (not for model creation, but for effective collaboration with Data Science).

• Experience with data lineage, data-quality scoring, observability systems, and automated validation frameworks.

• Experience with Cloud Composer, Dataproc, or streaming architectures for near-real-time data processing.

• Track record shaping long-term architecture or leading cross-organizational platform initiatives

Where we're going

UKG is on the cusp of something truly special. Worldwide, we already hold the #1 market share position for workforce management and the #2 position for human capital management. Tens of millions of frontline workers start and end their days with our software, with billions of shifts managed annually through UKG solutions today. Yet it's our AI-powered product portfolio designed to support customers of all sizes, industries, and geographies that will propel us into an even brighter tomorrow!

Equal Opportunity Employer

UKG is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, disability, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, genetic information, and other legally protected categories.

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It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.

Disability Accommodation in the Application and Interview Process

For individuals with disabilities that need additional assistance at any point in the application and interview process, please email [email protected].

The pay range for this position is base salary of $142,100 to $200,000, however, base pay offered may vary depending on skills, experience, job-related knowledge and location. This position is also eligible for a short-term incentive and a long-term incentive as part of total compensation. Information about UKG's comprehensive benefits can be reviewed on our careers site at https://https://www.ukg.com/about-us/careers/benefits