Senior Software Engineer | Developer Experience

About the role

Western Governors University is investing in modern engineering platforms and internal tooling to improve how software is built, tested, deployed, and operated. We are seeking a Senior Backend-Focused Full Stack Software Engineer to help design and scale these systems.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable backend services that power internal developer platforms and tooling
• Develop APIs, automation services, and platform components using Java and Python
• Improve and evolve internal developer experience (DevEx) systems, including build, test, and deployment pipelines
• Build and maintain internal tooling for service provisioning, environment management, and release automation
• Partner with DevOps and platform teams to enhance CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure automation
• Develop internal APIs and service frameworks that enable teams to build and ship software faster
• Improve observability, logging, tracing, and monitoring systems for engineering teams
• Collaborate with frontend engineers working in Angular and Flutter on internal dashboards and tooling interfaces
• Reduce operational friction by identifying bottlenecks in the SDLC and building scalable solutions
• Lead technical design discussions for platform architecture and internal systems
• Mentor engineers and help drive best practices in DevEx, automation, and platform engineering
• Support and improve reliability of internal systems used by engineering teams across the organization

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience
• Strong backend development experience with Java and Python
• Experience building internal tools, platforms, or developer-facing systems
• Experience with Spring Boot, FastAPI, Flask, Django, or similar frameworks
• Solid understanding of distributed systems and service-oriented architecture
• Experience building APIs and automation services at scale
• Familiarity with frontend integration using Angular and TypeScript
• Experience with 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 working with relational and NoSQL databases
• Strong debugging, troubleshooting, and systems thinking skills
• Excellent communication skills and ability to work across engineering teams

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in platform engineering, DevEx, or internal developer tooling teams
• Experience with event-driven systems and message queues
• Familiarity with GraphQL and API gateway architectures
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or similar)
• Strong knowledge of observability tooling (metrics, logging, tracing)
• Experience improving build systems, test automation, or release engineering
• Experience supporting large-scale engineering organizations or monorepo environments
• Passion for improving engineering velocity and developer productivity