Principal Software Engineer
About The Position
We believe in the power and joy of learning. At Cengage, our employees have a direct impact in helping learners around the world discover the power and joy of learning. We are bonded by our shared purpose – driving innovation that helps millions of learners improve their lives and achieve their dreams through education. What you'll do here: Lead all aspects of critical systems for delivering innovative education technology platforms. Specifically, you will lead technology teams in our Internal Operations business unit which includes our Content Systems, Content workflows and Content AI platforms. As a successful technology leader, you will build and lead remote software engineering organizations using agile principles to architect and deliver high availability enterprise software. You will partner closely with product and design teams and lead through data driven insights. You will be obsessing about customer outcomes in every decision made and drive measurable improvements in user engagement. In this role, you will balance your time between technical composing and product building for software development teams that work on content workflow automation, application development, and platform support. This is a multi-functional and agile team environment. You will work jointly with other technology and product leads to provide direction and leadership to the agile teams. Feel comfortable with situational leadership, able to lead or collaborate as needed. Design, architect, and implement new features and functionality with the expectation that you will own and drive the development using an iterative methodology and deliver products that scale to support our millions of customers. With product partners, customers and other technologists to understand customers’ content, learning and technological needs; provide guidance on technology solution options. Communicate sophisticated technical information clearly across product and technology teams, learning designers, interface designers and domain authorities in different parts of the organization. Supervise product performance, analyze performance data, and gather user feedback to continuously iterate and improve the product so our customers enjoy a consistently reliable and high-performing experience with our platforms, available 24/7. Conduct post-release evaluations, retrospectives, and A/B testing to advise future product enhancements and strategic decision-making. Adopt agile methodologies and the principles of a customer centric product model to drive iterative development, continuous improvement, and rapid time-to-market. Work closely with multi-functional teams to define user stories, prioritize backlog items, and ensure timely and high-quality product releases. Stay up to date with emerging technologies and industry trends and integrate relevant advancements into our product roadmaps. Participate in cultivating a high-performance, transparent culture of continuous improvement focused on accountability and results.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and recent, relevant work experience.
- 5 years of technology leadership experience, including developing technology strategies, fostering innovation, and influencing distributed teams across multiple time zones.
- Solid understanding of generative AI concepts and frameworks, such as LLMs, multimodal models, prompt engineering, AI agent orchestration, retrieval augmented generation, and vector databases.
- Hands-on experience integrating or experimenting with commercial and open-source GenAI technologies and toolkits (e.g., OpenAI, Hugging Face, LangChain).
- Familiarity with agentic workflows and AI-enabled automation for applications such as content management, search, personalization, or workflow optimization.
- Knowledge of AI safety, responsible AI practices, and content moderation systems.
- Motivation to be up-to-date with advancements in GenAI, MLOps, and digital transformation.
- Experience in modernizing legacy or monolithic architectures, migrating systems to modular, cloud-native platforms, and implementing hybrid cloud strategies.
- Consistent track record of architecting and deploying solutions on public cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including storage (S3), compute (EC2, Lambda), containerization (Kubernetes, Docker), and serverless computing and event driven systems.
- Understanding of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools (e.g., Terraform, AWS CDK) for automated, scalable deployments and GitOps / AIOps practics.
- Deep understanding and hands-on experience implementing AWS Well-Architected Framework across all six pillars.
- Skilled in agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe), with the ability to foster high-performing teams and use tools like Jira or Azure DevOps to support efficient, priority-aligned delivery.
- Understanding of content management systems, digital asset management, and content delivery networks.
- Experience with content workflow automation, metadata management, and content versioning systems.
- Knowledge of content personalization, search systems, and recommendation engines.
- Familiarity with content creation tools, authoring systems, and publishing platforms.
- Understanding of educational technology domains and learning content requirements.
- Strong interpersonal and collaboration skills—capable of partnering effectively with multi-functional teams, including product, build, and engineering, in distributed and remote-first environments.
- Experienced in breaking down complicated technical concepts for diverse technical and non-technical audiences, including executives and partners.
- Proactive approach to learning new technologies, embracing experimentation, and incorporating emerging practices into platforms and teams.
- Commitment to continuous improvement for both product and engineering culture.
Nice To Haves
- Check that communication is coming from an @cengage.com email address.
Responsibilities
- Lead all aspects of critical systems for delivering innovative education technology platforms.
- Lead technology teams in our Internal Operations business unit which includes our Content Systems, Content workflows and Content AI platforms.
- Build and lead remote software engineering organizations using agile principles to architect and deliver high availability enterprise software.
- Partner closely with product and design teams and lead through data driven insights.
- Obsess about customer outcomes in every decision made and drive measurable improvements in user engagement.
- Balance time between technical composing and product building for software development teams that work on content workflow automation, application development, and platform support.
- Work jointly with other technology and product leads to provide direction and leadership to the agile teams.
- Design, architect, and implement new features and functionality with the expectation that you will own and drive the development using an iterative methodology and deliver products that scale to support our millions of customers.
- Understand customers’ content, learning and technological needs; provide guidance on technology solution options.
- Communicate sophisticated technical information clearly across product and technology teams, learning designers, interface designers and domain authorities in different parts of the organization.
- Supervise product performance, analyze performance data, and gather user feedback to continuously iterate and improve the product so our customers enjoy a consistently reliable and high-performing experience with our platforms, available 24/7.
- Conduct post-release evaluations, retrospectives, and A/B testing to advise future product enhancements and strategic decision-making.
- Adopt agile methodologies and the principles of a customer centric product model to drive iterative development, continuous improvement, and rapid time-to-market.
- Work closely with multi-functional teams to define user stories, prioritize backlog items, and ensure timely and high-quality product releases.
- Stay up to date with emerging technologies and industry trends and integrate relevant advancements into our product roadmaps.
- Participate in cultivating a high-performance, transparent culture of continuous improvement focused on accountability and results.
Benefits
- Total Rewards package designed to support and empower our employees.
- Eligible to participate in the company’s discretionary incentive bonus program.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
