Staff Software Engineer Jobs in Pennsylvania
Staff Software Engineer jobs in Pennsylvania are in strong demand, with significant hiring concentrated in financial technology, defense and government contracting, healthcare IT, and enterprise software across a range from senior individual contributors to principal-level engineers. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh lead hiring volume, with a growing cluster in the Lehigh Valley, and employers with a lasting presence include Comcast, Lockheed Martin, and UPMC. The most sought-after specializations in Pennsylvania right now are distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and full-stack platform engineering. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
Find Staff Software Engineer JobsOverview
Showing 5 of 12+ Staff Software Engineer jobs
Minimum qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
-
8 years of experience with software development in one or more programming languages.
-
2 years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering, Production Engineering, or Systems Engineering roles managing large - scale infrastructure.
- 3 years of experience designing, analyzing, and troubleshooting distributed systems.
- 3 years of experience in machine learning infrastructure.
Preferred qualifications:
- Master's degree in Computer Science or Engineering.
- Experience enhancing and supporting large production systems on compute infrastructure.
- Experience with networking, capacity and performance.
- Experience in large-scale systems, architecture design and complex system integrations or migrations.
- Experience supporting a Tier 1 rotation.
- Expertise in SRE production principles and best practices.
About the job
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) combines software and systems engineering to build and run large-scale, massively distributed, fault-tolerant systems. SRE ensures that Google Cloud's services—both our internally critical and our externally-visible systems—have reliability, uptime appropriate to customer's needs and a fast rate of improvement. Additionally SRE’s will keep an ever-watchful eye on our systems capacity and performance.
Vertex AI is a key pillar to the Cloud AI's mission is to responsibly deliver AI that enables industries and organizations to transform and solve real-world problems through a single unified artificial intelligence platform that enables building, deploying, and scaling ML models faster with either pre-trained and custom tooling.
We are Tier 1 on-call for Vertex AI Online Prediction and Large Language Models, Gen AI and are planning to continue to extend support to the most critical services within the Vertex AI suite.
US: $207000 - $300000 (USD) + 20% bonus target + equity + benefits
Learn more about benefits at Google.
Responsibilities
- Develop scalable and sustainable system architecture and designs for products, services and enhancements.
- Defend performance of critical services in alignment with customer expectations and SLOs.
- Own and define strategy and set direction and establish roadmaps for Vertex AI services to increase reliability, efficiency and ultimately feature velocity.
- Resolve outages or service disruptions and help design solutions to ensure systems are protected from similar classes of problems in the future.
- Collaborate with development counterparts to incorporate and deliver enhancements to systems resulting in improved reliability, scalability and or performance.
Minimum qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
-
8 years of experience with software development in one or more programming languages.
-
2 years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering, Production Engineering, or Systems Engineering roles managing large - scale infrastructure.
- 3 years of experience designing, analyzing, and troubleshooting distributed systems.
- 3 years of experience in machine learning infrastructure.
Preferred qualifications:
- Master's degree in Computer Science or Engineering.
- Experience enhancing and supporting large production systems on compute infrastructure.
- Experience with networking, capacity and performance.
- Experience in large-scale systems, architecture design and complex system integrations or migrations.
- Experience supporting a Tier 1 rotation.
- Expertise in SRE production principles and best practices.
About the job
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) combines software and systems engineering to build and run large-scale, massively distributed, fault-tolerant systems. SRE ensures that Google Cloud's services—both our internally critical and our externally-visible systems—have reliability, uptime appropriate to customer's needs and a fast rate of improvement. Additionally SRE’s will keep an ever-watchful eye on our systems capacity and performance.
Vertex AI is a key pillar to the Cloud AI's mission is to responsibly deliver AI that enables industries and organizations to transform and solve real-world problems through a single unified artificial intelligence platform that enables building, deploying, and scaling ML models faster with either pre-trained and custom tooling.
We are Tier 1 on-call for Vertex AI Online Prediction and Large Language Models, Gen AI and are planning to continue to extend support to the most critical services within the Vertex AI suite.
US: $207000 - $300000 (USD) + 20% bonus target + equity + benefits
Learn more about benefits at Google.
Responsibilities
- Develop scalable and sustainable system architecture and designs for products, services and enhancements.
- Defend performance of critical services in alignment with customer expectations and SLOs.
- Own and define strategy and set direction and establish roadmaps for Vertex AI services to increase reliability, efficiency and ultimately feature velocity.
- Resolve outages or service disruptions and help design solutions to ensure systems are protected from similar classes of problems in the future.
- Collaborate with development counterparts to incorporate and deliver enhancements to systems resulting in improved reliability, scalability and or performance.
See All 12 Staff Software Engineer Jobs in Pennsylvania
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Find Staff Software Engineer JobsStaff Software Engineer Jobs by City in Pennsylvania
Where Pennsylvania roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Staff Software Engineer Job Market in Pennsylvania
A snapshot from current Pennsylvania openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Science & Research
- Medical Devices
- Technology & Software
What Pennsylvania Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in staff software engineer jobs across Pennsylvania.
- Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related technical field
- Seven or more years of professional software engineering experience with demonstrated technical leadership
- Proficiency in at least one primary language such as Java, Python, Go, or C++
- Experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems or cloud-native architectures
- Ability to mentor engineers, lead code reviews, and drive cross-team technical decisions
- Familiarity with agile development practices, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps tooling
Staff Software Engineer Jobs in Pennsylvania: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a staff software engineer in Pennsylvania?
Software engineering is not state-licensed in Pennsylvania, so there is no state board exam or registration required. The typical path runs through a computer science or engineering degree, followed by several years of progressively senior engineering roles. Pennsylvania employers, particularly in Philadelphia's fintech corridor and Pittsburgh's robotics and AI ecosystem, weight demonstrated systems-design experience and evidence of technical leadership over specific certifications when promoting or hiring at the staff level.
How much do staff software engineers make in Pennsylvania?
Staff software engineers in Pennsylvania earn a median of about $126,550 a year, based on May 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, ranging from around $77,750 for the lowest 10% to over $178,080 for the top 10%. Pay rises with experience, specialty, and employer.
Which companies hire staff software engineers in Pennsylvania?
Employers hiring staff software engineers in Pennsylvania right now include Ghost Robotics, Google, and Zoll Medical Corporation, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of September 2026. Pennsylvania's concentration of defense contractors, major health systems, and large media and telecom companies means staff-level roles appear across a wider range of industries than in purely startup-driven markets.
Which Pennsylvania cities have the most staff software engineer jobs?
Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania account for the most staff software engineer openings in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia dominates by volume because of its dense fintech, healthcare IT, and media-tech employer base, while Pittsburgh draws heavily from Carnegie Mellon's research ecosystem and a growing autonomous systems and AI sector that has brought anchor employers and spinouts to the region.
Are there remote staff software engineer jobs in Pennsylvania?
Yes, and more than most fields. About 70% of staff software engineer openings tied to Pennsylvania are remote or hybrid as of September 2026, reflecting how broadly distributed software development work has become for desk-based engineering roles. Platform engineering, backend infrastructure, and developer-tooling positions tend to carry the highest share of fully remote arrangements among Pennsylvania postings.
How can I get hired as a staff software engineer in Pennsylvania with little or no experience?
The most realistic path for candidates without staff-level experience is to enter through a senior software engineer role at a large Pennsylvania employer and build toward staff through demonstrated scope and leadership. UPMC, Comcast, and Lockheed Martin all run structured new-graduate and associate engineer programs in Pennsylvania that feed a pipeline into senior and staff tracks. Candidates who develop a strong portfolio of systems-design work, contribute to open-source projects at scale, or complete an advanced degree in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia research programs tend to move through that pipeline faster.
Where can I find and apply to staff software engineer jobs in Pennsylvania?
You can find and apply to staff software engineer jobs in Pennsylvania on Migrate Mate, which lists current Pennsylvania openings. Find the roles that fit your experience and apply directly to the ones that match.
See All 12 Staff Software Engineer Jobs in Pennsylvania
Find roles in Pennsylvania that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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