Manager, Software Engineering, Content Automations

Cengage Group

20h • Remote

About The Position

At Cengage, employees help students worldwide discover the power and joy of learning by driving innovation that helps millions improve their lives through education. Cengage's portfolio supports student choice with pathways to achieve goals. The company culture values inclusion, engagement, and discovery, recognizing diverse perspectives and empowering employees. As the Software Engineering Manager, you will manage and lead a team focused on partnering with content teams to analyze workflows, identify automation opportunities, and design AI-first solutions to improve efficiency and quality. You will lead end-to-end delivery of automation initiatives, collaborating with onsite and offshore engineering teams and cross-functional partners. The role involves driving the development of AI-powered tools through prototyping, enhancements, and continuous improvement. You will work closely with Product Managers and business partners to deliver innovative, scalable solutions, ensuring alignment with engineering guidelines. Following the Product Operating Model (POM), you will collaborate with product and design teams as a technical lead to improve customer outcomes through stakeholder engagements and data-driven insights. You will also lead, coach, and grow a high-performing engineering team, optimize content creation workflows using modern platforms, automation, and generative AI, and engage in POM Discovery activities. Responsibilities include tracking quality and efficiency improvements, balancing technical debt with new feature development, managing product backlogs and budgets, and staying current with emerging technologies.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and recent, relevant work experience.
• 3+ years of technology leadership experience, including developing technology strategies, fostering innovation, and leading globally distributed teams.
• Solid understanding of AI concepts, technologies and methods, including machine learning, Language, Reasoning & multimodal models, prompt & context engineering, developing and using skills & agent frameworks, RAG, and vector databases.
• Hands-on experience integrating or experimenting with commercial and open-source GenAI technologies and toolkits (e.g., coding assistants, OpenAI CODEX, LangChain).
• Experience in maintaining and/or modernizing legacy or monolithic architectures, migrating systems to modular, cloud-native platforms, and implementing hybrid cloud strategies.
• Ability to design and develop APIs that integrate legacy systems with modern solutions.
• Comfortable designing and deploying cloud native solutions on AWS, GCP, or Azure, using containers, serverless, and cloud storage/compute services.
• Proven ability to build secure, resilient, scalable, high-availability enterprise systems for global user bases.
• Strong experience with agile delivery (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe) and tooling such as Jira or Azure DevOps.
• Proven success organizing teams and delivery around a Product Operating Model.
• Demonstrated skills in working with cross-functional teams in distributed, remote-first environments.
• Ability to clearly communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences, including executives.

Responsibilities

• Manage and lead all aspects of a team dedicated to partnering with content teams to analyze current workflows, identify automation opportunities, and design AI-first solutions that improve efficiency and quality.
• Lead end-to-end delivery of automation initiatives, collaborating with onsite and offshore engineering teams as well as cross-functional partners across the organization.
• Drive development of AI-powered tools through prototyping (POCs), enhancements, and continuous improvement of existing platforms.
• Work closely with Product Managers and business partners to deliver innovative, scalable solutions while ensuring alignment to engineering guidelines in developing, implementation, and operations.
• Collaborate with product and design teams in your role as technical lead, following the Product Operating Model (POM), focusing on improving customer outcomes through frequent stakeholder engagements and data-driven insights.
• Lead, coach, and grow a high-performing engineering team focused on quality, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Reimagine and optimize content creation workflows using modern platforms, automation, and generative AI.
• Engage in driving POM Discovery activities including continuous customer engagement, both internal and external, to derive solutions that meet end user, company, and technology goals.
• Track quality and efficiency improvements through well instrumented SDLC tools and report progress to executive teams.
• Balance technical debt and other maintenance activities alongside new feature development within each sprint.
• Work with partners and customers to establish and handle product backlogs, product estimates and budgets.
• Stay ahead of on emerging technologies and industry trends to inject continuous innovation into our product roadmaps.

Benefits

• Comprehensive and rewarding Total Rewards package designed to support and empower our employees.
• Discretionary incentive bonus program.
• Culture values inclusion, engagement, and discovery.
• Programs, benefits, and initiatives that are integrated into the fabric of how we work every day.
• Reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities including during our job application process.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees