Senior Backend Architect & Tech Lead - AWS Cloud

Pearson; Des Moines (IA); On-site; USD 125,000 - 175,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual incentive program

Benefits package

Professional development

Job summary

Pearson in Des Moines, IA is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to own and build scalable backend services, contribute to frontend as needed, and drive production readiness across distributed systems on AWS.

You will mentor engineers, lead architectural decisions, design APIs and event-driven workflows, and modernize platforms while delivering new capabilities with reliability and performance.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience in Computer Science, Software Engineering, IT, or related field; master’s a plus.
• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience focusing on backend systems.
• Experience as a technical lead or senior engineer for complex cross-functional initiatives.
• Deep knowledge of backend concepts: distributed systems, concurrency, scalability, fault tolerance, and performance.
• Strong programming experience in Java, Kotlin, Scala, C#, Go, TypeScript, or similar.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and production support of complex software systems.
• Build scalable, reliable, and secure backend services, distributed systems, and event‑driven applications on AWS.
• Own major engineering initiatives from discovery through delivery and production rollout.
• Balance new features with modernization, technical debt reduction, and reliability improvements.
• Mentor engineers and establish standards for code quality, testing, observability, and operational readiness.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

AWS cloud

REST APIs

Microservices

Event-driven

Programming (Java/Go/TypeScript)

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS services

Terraform

Job description

Pearson in Des Moines, IA is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to own and build scalable backend services, contribute to frontend as needed, and drive production readiness across distributed systems on AWS.

You will mentor engineers, lead architectural decisions, design APIs and event-driven workflows, and modernize platforms while delivering new capabilities with reliability and performance.