Senior Backend Architect & Engineer (AWS, Microservices)

Pearson; Columbia (SC); On-site; USD 125,000 - 175,000; Full time

Job summary

Pearson is seeking an experienced Senior Software Engineer to own and drive end-to-end software initiatives in a cloud-native stack. You will design, build, deploy, and operate scalable backend services and distributed systems, partnering with product and architecture teams across global locations.

You will shape platform modernization, improve reliability and performance, and mentor engineers while advancing AI-enabled development practices.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience in Computer Science, Software Engineering, IT, or a related discipline.
• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with significant backend design, development and operation responsibility.
• Demonstrated experience as technical lead or senior engineer for complex, cross-functional initiatives.
• Strong backend concepts: distributed systems, concurrency, scalability, fault tolerance, resiliency, data processing and performance.
• Experience with modern strongly-typed languages (Java, Kotlin, Scala, C#, Go, Rust, TypeScript).
• Experience designing microservices, RESTful APIs, asynchronous workflows, event-driven architectures, streaming systems, and integration services.
• Deep AWS and cloud-native engineering experience including Lambda, ECS/EKS, API Gateway, SQS/SNS, EventBridge, MSK, Step Functions, DynamoDB, RDS/Aurora, Neptune, CloudWatch, and IaC.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and production support of complex software systems.
• Build scalable, reliable backend services and event-driven streaming solutions in cloud environments.
• Own major initiatives from discovery through production rollout and ongoing support.
• Balance new features with modernization, technical debt reduction, and system reliability.
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to distributed teams across locations.
• Produce clear architecture decisions, runbooks, and engineering standards.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

APIs

Cloud-native

Leadership

Communication

Problem solving

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent in CS/SE

Tools

AWS

ECS/EKS

API Gateway

SQS/SNS

DynamoDB

CloudWatch

Job description

Pearson is seeking an experienced Senior Software Engineer to own and drive end-to-end software initiatives in a cloud-native stack. You will design, build, deploy, and operate scalable backend services and distributed systems, partnering with product and architecture teams across global locations.

You will shape platform modernization, improve reliability and performance, and mentor engineers while advancing AI-enabled development practices.