Senior Backend Architect - Cloud-Native & Distributed Systems

Pearson; Springfield (IL); On-site; USD 125,000 - 175,000; Full time

Job summary

Pearson is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to own and evolve scalable backend systems, with a strong focus on distributed and event-driven architectures. You will lead architecture, design, and deployment of cloud-native solutions on AWS, collaborating across product and security teams.

The role emphasizes production reliability, modernization, and proactive technical leadership, delivering high-quality outcomes across global teams while mentoring engineers and advancing best practices.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience as a technical lead or senior engineer for cross-functional initiatives.
• Deep knowledge of backend engineering concepts and performance.
• Strong programming experience in Java, Kotlin, Scala, C#, Go, Rust, or TypeScript.
• Experience designing and building microservices, RESTful APIs, asynchronous workflows, event-driven architectures, streaming systems, and integration services.
• Strong experience with AWS and cloud-native engineering.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design, implementation, testing, deployment, operationalization, and production support of complex software systems.
• Build scalable, reliable backend services, distributed systems, event-driven applications, and stream-processing solutions.
• Own major engineering initiatives from discovery to delivery, production rollout, and ongoing support.
• Balance new feature delivery with modernization, debt reduction, reliability, and maintenance.
• Partner with product, architecture, security, and operations teams to translate requirements into technical approaches.
• Develop and communicate technical proposals with architecture decisions, risks, and trade-offs.
• Lead technical discovery sessions, architecture reviews, and design discussions for complex initiatives.
• Design APIs, microservices, asynchronous workflows, event-driven systems, and cloud-native services.

Skills

Backend development

Distributed systems

Cloud-native engineering

AWS

Microservices

RESTful APIs

Event-driven architectures

Team leadership

Technical leadership

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent in CS/SE/IT

Tools

AWS Lambda

ECS/EKS

API Gateway

SQS/SNS

EventBridge

MSK

DynamoDB

RDS/Aurora

Neptune

CloudWatch

Infrastructure as Code

Terraform / CDK

Job description

Pearson is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to own and evolve scalable backend systems, with a strong focus on distributed and event-driven architectures. You will lead architecture, design, and deployment of cloud-native solutions on AWS, collaborating across product and security teams.

The role emphasizes production reliability, modernization, and proactive technical leadership, delivering high-quality outcomes across global teams while mentoring engineers and advancing best practices.