Senior Software Engineer

The Senior Software Engineer is a senior individual contributor responsible for designing, developing, and delivering high-quality, scalable, secure, and reliable software solutions that support Pearson’s Higher Education Digital (HED) products and platforms. This role requires deep technical expertise, strong architectural thinking, and the ability to lead complex technical initiatives across multiple teams and systems.

The successful candidate will serve as a technical leader and subject matter expert, influencing engineering direction, driving modernization efforts, mentoring engineers, and collaborating with product, architecture, quality engineering, security, and operations teams. The role also requires a strong focus on operational excellence, cloud-native development, automation, and AI-assisted engineering practices to improve product quality, reliability, and delivery velocity.

What You’ll Own

The following responsibilities represent the general expectations for this role. Additional responsibilities may be assigned based on business needs.

Overall Responsibilities

Design, develop, test, deploy, and support enterprise-scale software applications and services.

Lead complex technical initiatives spanning multiple systems, services, and engineering teams.

Ensure software solutions meet the highest standards for quality, security, performance, maintainability, and reliability.

Participate in and influence architecture and design discussions, providing technical recommendations and guidance.

Drive adoption of modern software engineering practices, including CI/CD, automated testing, DevOps, observability, and cloud-native architectures.

Leverage AI-assisted development tools and emerging technologies to improve engineering productivity and solution quality.

Collaborate effectively with Product Management, Architecture, Security, Quality Engineering, and Operations teams to deliver business outcomes.

Provide technical leadership through code reviews, design reviews, mentoring, and knowledge sharing.

Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues while driving root-cause analysis and preventative improvements.

Identify risks, dependencies, and technical challenges and communicate them proactively to stakeholders.

Provide realistic estimates and consistently meet delivery commitments.

Contribute to platform modernization, cloud migration, scalability, security, and reliability initiatives.

Continuously enhance domain expertise and stay current with industry trends, technologies, and best practices.

Demonstrate accountability, ownership, professionalism, and alignment with Pearson values and ethical standards.

Support operational excellence through participation in incident management and production support activities when required.

To perform this role successfully, an individual must be able to execute the responsibilities listed above effectively. The requirements below are representative of the knowledge, skills, and experience required., Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical discipline.

8+ years of professional software engineering experience developing and supporting enterprise-scale applications and services.

Demonstrated experience leading complex technical initiatives and delivering solutions across multiple teams.

Proven experience designing, developing, deploying, and supporting cloud-native applications.

Experience working within Agile software development environments.

Strong experience collaborating with globally distributed engineering teams.

Proven ability to influence technical decisions and drive engineering excellence without direct managerial authority.

Experience supporting mission-critical production systems and customer-facing applications.

Experience mentoring software engineers and promoting engineering best practices.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES

Required:

Strong understanding of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), software design principles, and architectural patterns.

Expert-level proficiency in one or more modern programming languages and frameworks, such as Java, Spring Boot, JavaScript/TypeScript, Node.js, Python.

Strong experience with microservices, RESTful APIs, distributed systems, and event-driven architectures.

Experience building and operating applications on cloud platforms, preferably AWS.

Strong understanding of DevOps principles, CI/CD pipelines, and Infrastructure as Code.

Experience with source control systems such as Git and modern development workflows.

Experience with automated testing frameworks and quality engineering practices.

Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.

Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills.

Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Ability to rapidly learn and adopt emerging technologies and share knowledge across teams.

Strong understanding of security, performance optimization, reliability, and observability best practices.

Preferred:

Experience with AI-assisted software development tools and engineering productivity platforms.

Experience with large-scale SaaS or enterprise platforms.

Experience with monitoring and observability tools.

Experience with cloud cost optimization and performance engineering.

Familiarity with digital learning platforms, educational technology, or customer-facing digital products.

Experience contributing to architectural roadmaps and technical strategy.

Compensation at Pearson is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and specific location. As required by the California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York State, New York City, Vermont, Washington State, and Washington DC laws, the pay range for this position is as follows:

The minimum full-time salary range is between $110,000 - $140,000.

This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program, and information on benefits offered is here.

Applications will be accepted through 30th June. This window may be extended depending on business needs.

At Pearson, our purpose is simple: to help people realize the life they imagine through learning. We believe that every learning opportunity is a chance for a personal breakthrough. We are the world’s lifelong learning company. For us, learning isn’t just what we do. It’s who we are. To learn more: We are Pearson.