Head of Core Systems & Platform Transformation

Cengage Group; Omaha (NE); On-site; USD 193,000 - 308,000; Full time

Job summary

Cengage Group is seeking a Vice President, Core Systems within the Digital Product Technology organization to lead shared technology capabilities that scale across markets.

You will build and modernize core platforms, drive AI-enabled and cloud-native modernization, and partner with product, security, and compliance to meet global privacy and academic integrity standards.

In this role you will mentor leaders, establish governance, and ensure reliable delivery of learning platforms worldwide.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software, platform, or enterprise tech leadership.
• 8+ years leading senior engineering teams across multiple domains.
• Experience defining platform/shared-services strategies across complex product portfolios.
• Experience running high-availability enterprise systems with reliability targets and incident practices.
• Experience leading AI-enabled product platforms, personalization services, or enterprise data capabilities.
• Experience modernizing legacy platforms into scalable cloud-native architectures.
• Demonstrated success in consolidation and simplification to reduce debt, burden, and cost.
• Experience managing budgets, vendor relationships, and platform investment tradeoffs at scale.
• Excellent executive communication skills for influencing stakeholders.
• Strong organizational leadership, talent development, succession planning, and culture building.

Responsibilities

• Own the technology strategy, roadmap, and operating model for the core systems in support of the Product Technology strategy and enterprise priorities.
• Advance the “build once, scale everywhere” strategy by creating reusable capabilities.
• Drive modernization of Core Systems with generative AI, cloud-native architecture, API-first integration, automation, and observability.
• Establish shared AI infrastructure, data, retrieval, observability, safety, and platform services for smart learning experiences.
• Partner with product and business leaders to increase adoption of shared capabilities while tailoring experiences for markets.
• Drive engineering excellence through CI/CD, automation, observability, incident management, and portfolio execution.
• Evaluate build, buy, and partner options for Core Systems with cost, risk, and interoperability tradeoffs.

Skills

Leadership experience

Executive communication

AI-enabled platforms

Platform modernization

Budget management

Consolidation efforts

Cloud-native architectures

High-availability systems

Vendor management

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

Cengage Group is seeking a Vice President, Core Systems within the Digital Product Technology organization to lead shared technology capabilities that scale across markets.

You will build and modernize core platforms, drive AI-enabled and cloud-native modernization, and partner with product, security, and compliance to meet global privacy and academic integrity standards.

In this role you will mentor leaders, establish governance, and ensure reliable delivery of learning platforms worldwide.