If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.
Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.
The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.
At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:
Grade: Technical 412
Pay Range: $180,300.00 - $279,500.00
The Principal Software Engineer is a position of technical expertise, influence, and leadership in the technology realm. The position will be required to apply their expert knowledge to ensure best practices and well-engineered architecture across the University. They will also be a key stakeholder and initiator of major changes to processes, engineering practices, and system administration. This position will be required to work in a space of solving critical issues and initiatives across multiple departments. It will require an extensive and deep understanding of cutting-edge practices and innovative approaches to problems. Principal Software Engineers are also tasked with establishing and maintaining a positive and productive culture based on the WGU Leadership Principles.
At WGU, technology is at the heart of transforming higher education. As a Principal Software Engineer, you will serve as one of the organization's foremost technical leaders, influencing the architecture, scalability, reliability, and future direction of a platform that empowers hundreds of thousands of students on their educational journey.
This is not a role focused on day-to-day feature delivery. It is an opportunity to solve complex, organization-wide engineering challenges, define technical strategy across multiple product and engineering domains, and elevate the capabilities of an entire engineering organization. You will partner with senior engineering leaders, product executives, and business stakeholders to drive innovation, establish architectural direction, and create technology solutions that scale for the future.
If you are passionate about distributed systems, modern cloud architecture, technical leadership, engineering excellence, and mentoring the next generation of technical talent, we'd love to meet you.
You bring extensive experience designing and building large-scale software systems and have a proven track record of delivering architecture that balances scalability, resilience, security, and business value.
You have expertise in:
You see beyond individual projects and understand how technology decisions impact the broader organization. You are skilled at connecting technical strategy to business outcomes and influencing decisions across multiple stakeholders.
You lead through expertise, vision, mentorship, and influence. You build trust across teams and help engineers at every level grow their technical capabilities and decision-making skills.
You understand that great technology exists to solve real problems. You are passionate about creating exceptional experiences for students, faculty, and staff, and you consistently advocate for solutions that deliver meaningful value.
The systems you build directly impact students pursuing life-changing educational opportunities. Your work helps increase access to education at scale.
Work on highly available, cloud-based platforms serving a large and growing user population while tackling complex architectural and organizational challenges.
Your decisions will shape engineering strategy, platform evolution, and technology investments across the company.
Help define engineering standards, develop technical leaders, and create the technology foundation that powers the next generation of online education.
Join WGU and help build technology that transforms lives, scales innovation, and shapes the future of online education.
Job Description Disclaimer: This position description provides the major duties/responsibilities, requirements and working conditions for the position. It is intended to be an accurate reflection of the current position, however management reserves the right to revise or change as necessary to meet organizational needs. Other responsibilities may be assigned when circumstances require.
This position requires occasional travel of up to 20%, including required attendance at designated company summits (typically one to two per year). Additional travel may include conferences, visits to company locations, and other business-related events as needed. Additional travel may be assigned as needed to support business requirements.
Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.
How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.
Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It’s not all-inclusive.
Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at recruiting@wgu.edu.
Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.
