Software Engineering Manager

Pearson•United States,

5h•$150,000 - $190,000•Remote

About The Position

The Software Engineering Manager leads a team of 5–8 software engineers on the Enterprise Learning & Skills engineering team. The team builds, scales, and evolves a large-scale, API-driven platform used globally to issue and verify digital credentials. This is a people- and delivery-focused leadership role responsible for the team’s day-to-day health, output, and growth, and for ensuring work remains on track, meets quality and consistency standards, and delivers expected outcomes for the organization and its customers. The manager allocates and prioritizes daily work, clears blockers, clarifies requirements, and provides timely feedback. They are the first line of support for coding or system issues, determining which issues the team can resolve and which should be escalated to senior engineering leadership. The role owns onboarding and skill development for new team members and partners with Product, Customer Success, and external vendors to translate requirements into reliable, well-sequenced delivery. Production coding is not required, but sufficient technical depth is needed to guide design discussions, uphold strong engineering practices, and evaluate relevant questions and trade-offs. The position is remote and works with a team building Ruby on Rails services and React frontends. The manager is expected to champion responsible use of AI-assisted development tools and uphold secure, ethical, and resilient engineering practices, including data and information security expectations. The full-time salary range is $150,000–$190,000, and the position is eligible for an annual incentive program.

Requirements

At least 5 years of professional software development experience.
At least 2 years managing or formally leading a software engineering team.
Working familiarity with Ruby on Rails, React, AWS, and PostgreSQL.
Familiarity with API management, cloud computing, DevOps practices, and software design, with enough technical acumen to guide discussions and evaluate trade-offs.
Proven ability to run a team’s daily delivery reliably, with consistent adherence to coding and QA standards, accurate and timely task completion, and dependable schedules.
Strong problem-solving skills, including identifying challenges early, evaluating options, and driving practical resolutions.
Exceptional collaboration and communication skills with engineers, non-technical stakeholders, and external vendors.
Experience onboarding and developing engineers, with evidence of shortened ramp-up times and increased team capability.
Sound judgment about when to resolve issues locally and when to escalate, and a record of clear, prompt escalation.
Adaptability and commitment to continuous learning as the team, platform, and tooling evolve.
Strong understanding of information and data security fundamentals and an ethical, customer-centric approach.
Comfort using AI tools and guiding a team in their use for coding, testing, documentation, and learning; ability to set expectations for validation and sound judgment about when to rely on AI.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience as a Rails, React, or full-stack engineer before moving into management.
Experience designing, deploying, or operating production workloads on AWS and Azure.
Familiarity with CI/CD and automated deployment practices.
Experience managing work delivered in partnership with third-party or vendor teams.
Experience with resilience planning, incident management, or on-call processes for customer-facing systems.
Experience with distributed or service-oriented systems and asynchronous, event-driven communication between services.
Experience introducing AI agents or automated AI tooling into an engineering team’s workflow.

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and support a team of 5–8 engineers building Ruby on Rails services and React frontends, with responsibility for team well-being, performance, and immediate output.
Plan and allocate daily and sprint work, monitor progress against delivery schedules, and keep projects on track through clear priorities and timely course corrections.
Troubleshoot obstacles, clarify requirements, and coordinate handoffs across engineers, teams, and vendors to resolve blockers.
Triage bugs and production issues while minimizing disruption to customers.
Maintain team standards for quality and consistency, including coding and QA standards, code review coverage, test thoroughness, and documentation.
Provide real-time constructive feedback, run regular one-on-ones, and recognize team milestones and individual contributions.
Own onboarding and skill development for new team members, reducing ramp-up time and onboarding errors.
Identify and introduce team-level process improvements within defined limits, and promptly escalate unresolved or higher-impact issues to senior engineering leadership.
Champion responsible use of AI-assisted tools for coding, testing, documentation, and debugging, including validating AI-generated output and guiding appropriate use.
Uphold secure, ethical, and resilient engineering practices, including data and information security expectations.
Partner with Product, Customer Success, and external vendors to turn requirements into reliable, well-sequenced delivery.
Determine whether coding or system issues can be resolved by the team or require escalation to senior engineering leadership.