Senior Backend Architect – Cloud‑Native, AWS & Microservices

Pearson; Madison (WI); On-site; USD 125,000 - 175,000; Full time

Job summary

Pearson seeks an experienced Senior Software Engineer to own and deliver complex backend systems in a cloud‑native environment. The role emphasizes design, development, and operations of scalable services, distributed systems, and event‑driven architectures on AWS.

You will collaborate across product and architecture teams to translate business needs into reliable technical solutions. You will drive modernization, reduce technical debt, and improve performance while maintaining strong focus on

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Deep knowledge of backend engineering concepts including distributed systems, concurrency, scalability, fault tolerance, resiliency and performance.
• Strong programming experience with modern typed languages (Java, Kotlin, Scala, C#, Go, Rust, TypeScript).
• Experience designing and building microservices, RESTful APIs, asynchronous workflows, event‑driven architectures, streaming systems, and integration services.
• Experience with AWS and cloud‑native engineering and IaC.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and production support of complex software systems.
• Build scalable, reliable, secure backend services and event‑driven architectures on AWS.
• Own major engineering initiatives from discovery through delivery and production rollout.
• Balance new feature delivery with modernization, debt reduction, and reliability improvements.
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to global engineering teams.
• Mentor engineers through design guidance, code reviews, and best practices.

Skills

Distributed systems

Backend development

Microservices

APIs

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Master's degree preferred

Tools

AWS

ECS

EKS

API Gateway

SQS/SNS

DynamoDB

RDS/Aurora

Job description

Pearson seeks an experienced Senior Software Engineer to own and deliver complex backend systems in a cloud‑native environment. The role emphasizes design, development, and operations of scalable services, distributed systems, and event‑driven architectures on AWS.

You will collaborate across product and architecture teams to translate business needs into reliable technical solutions. You will drive modernization, reduce technical debt, and improve performance while maintaining strong focus on