Lead Content Engineer

College Board • Remote - Virginia, VA

3d • $80,000 - $140,000 • Remote

About The Position

The Lead Content Engineer leads the design, governance, and evolution of structured exam content and metadata across the assessment lifecycle within College Board item creation systems and with external and internal consumers. The role drives standards compliance, interchange status, and metadata alignment across a complex ecosystem.

Working at the intersection of content strategy, data modeling, and technical specification, the Lead Content Engineer establishes shared structures and terminology, aligns authoring tools within a common architecture, and ensures content works as both machine-readable data and human-consumable artifacts. The near-term priority is content standards and interchange, including defining ingestion and translation layers for QTI and related edtech content standards, integrating with external vendors and customers, and supporting development of a global item bank. The role partners with content or domain experts and owns the schema, standards, and translation architecture for correct, repeatable migrations and consistent internal interchange of items and metadata. This is a systems leadership role with enterprise impact.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in structured content systems, assessment production, publishing technology, or comparable environments.
• Deep understanding of metadata modeling, content schemas, and data governance, especially in the assessment space.
• Direct experience with QTI or a comparable edtech content interchange standard, including export/import translation between systems with different content models.
• Experience working with machine-readable formats such as JSON and XML, and with system integrations.
• Proven ability to define standards and drive cross-team adoption in complex ecosystems.
• Strong systems thinking and precision in terminology and specification writing.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
• Ability to travel 2–4 times a year to College Board offices or on College Board business.
• Authorization to work in the United States.
• Passion for expanding educational and career opportunities and mission-driven work.
• Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, willingness to experiment with and adopt AI-driven solutions, and ability to learn and apply digital tools independently and proactively.
• Clear and concise written and verbal communication skills.
• A learner’s mindset, commitment to growth, openness to diverse perspectives, and willingness to give and receive timely, respectful feedback.
• Drive for impact and excellence, including solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing effectively, and continuously improving.
• Collaborative and empathetic approach, including working across differences, fostering trust, and contributing to shared success.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in large-scale assessment or high-stakes exam production environments.
• Familiarity with item banking, form assembly tools, scoring workflows, and reporting systems.
• Experience aligning multiple legacy tools or workflows under a unified data model.
• Active participation in edtech standards bodies or working groups, such as those governing QTI.
• Exposure to automation, validation frameworks, or content engineering best practices.

Responsibilities

• Own content interchange architecture and the quality and integrity of item and assessment-content exchange between College Board and external or legacy systems, grounded in QTI and related edtech standards.
• Lead near-term content migrations from vendors and legacy systems, owning schema mapping, structural validation, and standards compliance in partnership with subject-matter experts.
• Lead evolution of a unified content model supporting a universal item bank as a common directory of metadata and content.
• Design reusable translation layers for content interchange that can be extended to future providers and systems.
• Define validation checkpoints to detect structural or metadata loss during interchange or translation before content reaches production.
• Represent College Board in relevant edtech standards groups and track and influence standards evolution as it affects the platform.
• Analyze existing item, form, and course metadata schemas, compare them, and identify gaps.
• Develop structured content specifications that support downstream form assembly, assignment, scoring, and reporting systems.
• Ensure interoperability and security across applications and platforms through consistent data modeling and governance.
• Balance machine-readable formats such as JSON with human-readable outputs for stakeholder validation and quality assurance.
• Support practical usage and development based on stakeholder needs and system evolution.
• Maintain metadata consistency and correctness from item authoring through form build, assignment, scoring, and score reporting; diagnose problems and create tickets.
• Anticipate and mitigate structural risks before they affect production or stakeholder trust.
• Define quality checkpoints and validation mechanisms across the content lifecycle.
• Serve as a strategic liaison among content teams, engineering, psychometrics, scoring, reporting, and platform stakeholders.
• Communicate complex data structures clearly and actionably to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Lead alignment when standards or system changes affect multiple teams.
• Work closely with the platform Content Engineering Director to support external interchanges and interfaces.

Benefits

• Comprehensive compensation and benefits package.
• Fair and competitive compensation grounded in qualifications, experience, impact, and market data.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior