Fast Facts

WGU is seeking a Staff Machine Learning Operations Engineer to design and develop scalable online education solutions, ensuring high-quality software delivery while managing complex projects in a high-pressure environment.

Responsibilities: Developing backend services, managing projects under pressure, optimizing performance, and researching third party integrations, ensuring leadership in technical projects.

Skills: Experience in web applications using Java, SOAP, REST, and strong proficiency in MLOps frameworks such as Databricks and SageMaker, alongside programming in Scala, Go, or Python.

Qualifications: Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field with a minimum of 9 years of relevant experience, preferable experience may reduce the requirement by 2-4 years.

Location: WGU North Carolina, United States of America

Compensation: $175900 - $272600 / Annually

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 412Pay Range: $175,900.00 - $272,600.00

Job Description

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Designs and develops web/backend and cicd services.
• Manages multiple tasks and responsibilities in high-pressure environments; excelling at pinpointing and resolving problems in early project stages to avoid cost/time expenses.
• Delivers high quality projects on time, through ability to design architecture.
• Writes high quality code, and effective unit tests establishing and enforcing standards for the other engineers.
• Monitors and optimizes performance for high utilization 24x7 service.
• Reduces incident occurrence by eliminating the root cause and continually improving and advocating for organizational best practices and standards.
• Researches and integrates third party products with existing infrastructure.
• Anticipates future state of the ml ops platform and continuously updates architecture.
• Evaluates technology over mid to long term time horizon and considers business and technical trade-offs.
• Works with product to gather business processes and project requirements.
• Researches, designs, and develops computer software systems, in conjunction with hardware product development applying principles and techniques of computer science, engineering, and mathematical analysis.
• As a subject matter master, analyzes software requirements to determine feasibility of design within time and cost constraints.
• Consults with hardware engineers and other engineering staff to evaluate and recommend interface between hardware and software, and operational and performance requirements of overall system.
• Formulates and designs complex software systems, using scientific analysis and mathematical models to predict and measure outcome and consequences of design.
• Develops and directs software system testing procedures, programming, and documentation.
• Ensures work area is clean, secure, and well maintained.
• Performs miscellaneous projects as assigned.
• Updates technical skills as required.
• Performs other related duties as assigned.

Knowledge, Skill and Abilities:

• Experience with operating high-availability, fault-tolerant, scalable, distributed software/infrastructure in production utilizing Dev Ops best practices.
• Excellent understanding of issue troubleshooting and performance tuning
• Commitment to quality through the ability to translate complex technical requirements into functional software using best practices to write high quality code.
• Ability to work in a self-managed team-based Agile projects providing technical guidance and leadership to other team members.
• Excellent Experience with software engineering standard methodologies (unit testing, code reviews, design document, continuous delivery).
• Develop and deploy production-grade services, SDK’s, and data infrastructure emphasizing performance, scalability, and self-service.
• Excellent experience with existing MLOps frameworks (Databricks, Seldon, Sagemaker, DVC, etc.).
• Strong background with either Scala (Java), Go, or Python programming experience.
• Solid Experience operating big data infrastructure in a cloud-based ecosystem (AWS preferred).
• Solid understanding of traffic management and networking concepts.
• Experience with stream-processing systems (ksqlDB, Spark Streaming, Apache Beam/Flink, etc.).

Competencies: 

Organizational or Student Impact:

• Follows technical/ business processes; helps support change when necessary.
• Executes complex, specialized technical projects/assignments.
• Responsible for major or many components in the area of expertise.
• Limit errors to prevent impact to client operations, costs, or schedules.

Problem Solving & Decision Making:

• Individual meets department and personal goals with little direction/ supervision.
• Leads key technical projects, programs and may facilitate leadership and development of technical teams.
• Drives project methods, techniques, and procedures.

Communication & Influence:

• Communicates with parties within and outside of the university (e.g., customers, vendors, etc.)
• Works to influence parties within and outside of the job function at an operational level regarding policies, procedures, and practices.

Leadership & Talent Management:

• Responsible for providing guidance, coaching, and training to other employees within the technical area.
• Responsible for managing significant/complex technical projects at this level, involving delegation of work and review of work products.

Job Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field.
• Minimum of 9 years' experience and a proven track record in developing web-based applications and web services using Java, SOAP, REST, XML, and other web technologies, including experience interfacing with Oracle databases, and integrating third party products with existing infrastructure
• Subject matter expert in area of responsibility or has extensive knowledge of several technical areas.
• Advanced degrees (Master’s or PhD) may be required for certain disciplines and reduce the experience requirement by 2-4 years.

Department Specific Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field.
• Minimum of 6 years' experience and a proven track record in developing web-based applications and web services using Java, SOAP, REST, XML, and other web technologies, including experience interfacing with Oracle databases, and integrating third party products with existing infrastructure.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Other Technical Experience That Would be a Plus
• NetBeans
• Subversion
• Jira
• Agile/Scrum project development
• IDM/OSSO
• ASP/.Net
• DRUPAL
• Groovy/Grails
• Ruby/Rails
• PHP
• Hibernate/Seam
• Banner
• DROOLS, JBOSS
• Technical Certification
• Application Integration with legacy systems
• JSF, J2EE, Java EE, jQuery, JavaScript
• SQL
• Oracle or another database interface

Position & Application Details

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.

Additional Information

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 [email protected].

Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.