[Hiring] Staff Software Engineer @Workiva Inc.

Role Description

The Growth Engineering team is focused on bringing new AI-driven product ideas to life, from early experimentation through to scalable, customer-facing solutions. Engineers on this team work across the full product lifecycle, balancing rapid iteration with thoughtful system design. As a Staff Software Engineer, you’ll help define architecture, guide technical strategy, and make high-impact contributions to products that are still taking shape.

We’re looking for 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 is ideal for an experienced engineer who thrives at the intersection of hands-on building and technical leadership. Someone who can navigate ambiguity, drive architectural decisions, and influence across teams to deliver meaningful business outcomes.

As a Staff Engineer, you’ll shape technical strategy, mentor engineers, and solve complex problems that span systems and domains. You’ll work across our modern stack, primarily TypeScript, Java/Kotlin, and Postgres (SQL) and make significant hands-on contributions to deliver secure, scalable, and high-quality software. AI is central to both how we build and what we build: you’ll help develop LLM-powered features and workflows, so we expect fluency with tools such as Claude, OpenAI Codex and/or Cursor to create intelligent, user-facing capabilities.

What You’ll Do

• 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.
• 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.

Qualifications

• 6+ 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.

Requirements

• 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.
• Strong foundation in Account concepts and how they can be applied in software solutions.
• 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.

Benefits

• Salary range in the US: $129,000.00 - $210,000.00
• A discretionary bonus typically paid annually
• Restricted Stock Units granted at time of hire
• 401(k) match and comprehensive employee benefits package