System Engineer Phd Jobs in Ames, IA (NOW HIRING)

At Workiva, we build and scale an enterprise platform that powers complex financial reporting, compliance, and collaboration for some of the world's largest organizations. We solve for high-throughput data, strict consistency, and architectural scale while exploring what AI can do to transform how engineering teams work.

We are not simply adding AI to existing workflows. We are redesigning how engineering gets done. That means building systems, practices, and products where AI is a real collaborator in development, testing, validation, and platform evolution.

We are hiring a Principal Software Engineer who can operate across multiple modes of work: platform modernization, iterative product development, and high-ambition greenfield exploration. This is a hands-on role for someone who can define strategy, deliver complex systems, and raise the technical bar for the teams around them.

What You'll Do

Deliver outcomes

• Partner with engineering teams to co-deliver complex work across platform modernization, product evolution, and new product bets.

• Adapt your technical approach, planning style, and delivery strategy to match the needs of the work.

• Use AI-native development methods to build automation, validation, and engineering harnesses that improve speed, quality, and leverage.

• Lead technical strategy across large, multi-team initiatives with long-term impact.

• Define and evolve system boundaries across complex domains, with a focus on clean interfaces and scalability.

• Identify and remove bottlenecks in performance, data flow, reliability, and architecture.

• Lead exploration, prototyping, and validation for ambiguous technical problems.

• Partner with cross-functional peers on disaster recovery planning, testing, and optimization.

• Design systems that enable autonomous or semi-autonomous engineering workflows.

• Build context-aware infrastructure that connects code, documentation, and systems to AI tooling.

• Develop guardrails such as validation layers, static analysis, and automation hooks to ensure safe and reliable AI-assisted development.

• Improve how AI is used across the organization for both effectiveness and efficiency.

• Raise the technical bar by helping teams think bigger and execute better.

• Mentor and challenge Staff+ engineers to expand their scope, judgment, and impact.

• Partner with engineering and product leadership to align technical decisions with business outcomes.

• Create durable artifacts such as runbooks, decision logs, and tests that can be handed off and evolved by others.

• Contribute across product domains, bringing context from one area to solve problems in another.

• 8+ years of experience building and scaling complex software systems.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Security, or a related field; or 6+ years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with 4+ years of experience; or equivalent practical experience

• Demonstrated experience using AI as a primary development collaborator, with a strong quality bar for AI-generated output.

• Proven success leading large, cross-pillar technical initiatives.

• Track record of working effectively across platform modernization, iterative product development, and greenfield delivery.

• Strong architectural judgment across distributed systems, APIs, and platform design

• Ability to operate as a force multiplier for other engineers.

• Experience improving engineering testing standards through approaches such as TDD, BDD, load testing, stress testing, chaos testing, invariant testing, or mutation testing.

• Experience building infrastructure that improves engineering velocity and quality at scale.

• Strong background in distributed systems and platform architecture.

• Experience inferring behavioral specifications from existing systems through code, tests, logs, and subject-matter experts.

• Ability to deliver production-quality outcomes in a small, time-boxed team setting.

• Strong written communication skills and a habit of creating durable, useful artifacts.

• A leadership style that empowers others rather than creating dependency.

How You'll Be Rewarded

A discretionary bonus typically paid annually

Restricted Stock Units granted at time of hire

401(k) match and comprehensive employee benefits package

The salary range represents the low and high end of the salary range for this job in the US. Minimums and maximums may vary based on location. The actual salary offer will carefully consider a wide range of factors, including your skills, qualifications, experience and other relevant factors.

Why Join Workiva

Workiva is the platform designed to bring confidence, control, and a competitive edge to the world's most complex organizations. Our AI-powered platform unifies finance, risk, and sustainability on a single, secure foundation-ensuring data is trusted, traceable, and ready to act on. With an unbroken path from source to output, leaders gain confidence in their numbers, visibility into current and emerging risks, and the ability to move with speed and precision in a constantly changing world.

At Workiva, you'll bring technology to market that executives, boards, and regulators depend on. The work you do here helps organizations navigate uncertainty, maintain trust, and make decisions that stand up to scrutiny. If you're energized by meaningful challenges, inspired by collaborative teams, and motivated to help organizations turn uncertainty into advantage, we'd love to meet you.

Employment decisions are made without regard to age, race, creed, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, disability status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, citizenship status or any other protected characteristic.

Workiva is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. To request assistance with the application process, please email talentacquisition@workiva.com.

Workiva employees are required to undergo comprehensive security and privacy training tailored to their roles, ensuring adherence to company policies and regulatory standards.

Workiva supports employees in working where they work best - either from an office or remotely from any location within their country of employment.