Technology Lead, Platforms & Ecommerce Engineering

Cengage Group

About The Position

In your role as Technology Lead, Platforms & Ecommerce Engineering within our Digital organization, you are responsible for building and operating our ecommerce platforms and the capabilities that enable them, including CMS, identity, and enterprise integrations. You will lead a lean, high-performing team using agile principles to design, integrate, and operate scalable, reliable solutions. You will partner closely with enterprise stakeholders to support delivery of customer-facing experiences. With a strong focus on reliability and scalability, you will ensure platforms are stable, secure, and performant while enabling continuous improvement. You will also help advance how AI is applied within engineering workflows to improve efficiency. As the Technology Lead, you will divide your time between team leadership and hands-on development, leading engineers while contributing directly to delivery. You will operate in a cross-functional, agile environment, working closely with Experience Engineering, IT, Marketing, Design, and DevOps to align on priorities and execution. You will collaborate with other technology leads to provide technical direction and alignment across teams, and must be comfortable adapting your leadership style to the situation, leading when needed and contributing as an individual engineer when appropriate.

Requirements

Bachelor degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent combination of education and recent relevant work experience required
5+ years in a technical leadership or team lead role, including developing technology strategies and driving innovation
Strong experience with backend development, API design, and integration patterns
Experience working with ecommerce and CMS platforms
Experience integrating with enterprise platforms such as Salesforce, SAP, identity providers, or marketing systems
Strong understanding of system design, scalability, and reliability
Experience working in agile teams
Strong communication skills

Nice To Haves

Experience with headless CMS and composable architectures
Experience with event-driven architecture or middleware
Experience with cloud platforms (AWS or similar)
Experience using AI-assisted development tools

Responsibilities

Drive iterative delivery using agile methodologies
Lead development and operation of core commerce platforms and supporting capabilities (CMS, identity, integrations)
Define, prioritize, and communicate work clearly across Experience Engineering and stakeholders
Design and build backend services and APIs to support transaction flows
Own integrations across enterprise platforms including ecommerce (currently SAP), CRM (Salesforce), identity (Okta), and marketing systems
Contribute directly to critical development and integration work
Partner with Experience Engineering to enable efficient use of platform capabilities
Ensure services are reliable, secure, and performant through strong testing and quality practices
Monitor performance and integration health across critical flows
Collaborate with DevOps on environments and delivery practices as needed
Stay current with backend, integration, and AI-assisted development practices
Apply AI-assisted approaches to improve efficiency and delivery quality
Build a focused, accountable, high-performing team culture