Senior Software Engineer

Pearson; New York (NY); On-site; USD 150,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Pearson is seeking a Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer to join the Enterprise Learning & Skills engineering team. You will own significant parts of a large-scale API-driven platform for issuing and verifying digital credentials, design and build new systems, and raise the technical bar for the team.

You will mentor engineers, review code, partner with Product and Customer Success, and contribute to architecture decisions while delivering high-quality, scalable software.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software development experience.
• Proficiency with Ruby on Rails, React, AWS, and PostgreSQL.
• Experience in software architecture, system design, and scalability.
• Experience mentoring or supporting junior engineers.
• Strong cross-functional communication with engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience with distributed or service-oriented systems and asynchronous communication.
• Comfort working across multiple codebases and unfamiliar systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and delivery of complex features end-to-end.
• Write clear, well-tested code and reduce complexity by simplifying services.
• Mentor junior engineers through code reviews and knowledge sharing.
• Evolve the platform to support new services and capabilities across domains.
• Partner with external vendors and stakeholders to translate requirements into technical solutions.
• Utilize AI-assisted development tools for coding, testing, and debugging.
• Follow best practices for secure, scalable, cloud-native web applications.

Skills

Ruby on Rails

React

AWS

PostgreSQL

Software architecture

Mentoring

Distributed systems

Event-driven

Tools

CI/CD pipelines

Apache Pulsar

Apache Kafka

Job description

About the role

We're looking for a Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer to join the Enterprise Learning & Skills (ELS) engineering team and help build, scale, and evolve a large-scale, API-driven platform used globally to issue and verify digital credentials. This is a hands-on role for an experienced engineer who will own significant parts of the platform today, help design and build new systems and features, and raise the technical bar for the team.

You'll work closely with other senior engineers and technical leads, contribute to architectural decisions, and mentor earlier-career engineers. You'll be expected to write and review code regularly while also thinking ahead about how to reduce complexity and improve the health of the systems you own. As the platform grows, you'll help evolve it by standing up and supporting new services and capabilities, including services delivered in partnership with external vendors.

What you'll do

• Lead the design and delivery of complex, well-scoped features and systems end to end
• Write clear, maintainable, well-tested code and reduce complexity by simplifying services, improving patterns, and paying down technical debt
• Mentor junior engineers and level up the team through code reviews, feedback, and knowledge sharing
• Evolve the platform to support new services and capabilities, including work across adjacent codebases and domains
• Partner with external vendors and stakeholders across Product and Customer Success to turn requirements into sound technical solutions
• Use AI-assisted development tools for coding, testing, and debugging
• Follow and promote best practices for secure, scalable, cloud-native web application development

What we're looking for

• 7+ years of professional software development experience
• Proficiency with our core stack: Ruby on Rails, React, AWS, and PostgreSQL
• Proven track record of making high-impact technical decisions in complex production environments, shipping well-tested code, and giving constructive code reviews
• Excellent cross-functional communication, equally effective with engineers and non-technical stakeholders
• Experience in software architecture, system design, and scalability with a strong hands-on background
• Experience mentoring or supporting junior engineers
• Experience with distributed or service-oriented systems and asynchronous, event-driven communication between services
• Comfort working across more than one codebase and ramping quickly into unfamiliar systems

You should be comfortable using AI tools to assist with coding, testing, documentation, and learning, and, importantly, exercising sound engineering judgment about their output. This means validating AI-generated code, knowing when to rely on it and when not to and staying curious about how AI can responsibly improve developer productivity across the team.

Nice to Have

• Hands-on experience designing, deploying, and operating production workloads on AWS and Azure
• Experience building and improving CI/CD pipelines and automated deployment practices that raise delivery velocity across the team
• Experience integrating with, or building alongside, third-party or vendor-delivered services
• Strong understanding of web application security best practices with a track record of raising the security bar across a codebase
• Experience with design systems, component libraries, or advanced frontend tooling
• Experience with scalability, resilience, or performance work at scale
• Experience with messaging or event-streaming systems such as Apache Pulsar or Apache Kafka

Compensation at Pearson is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and specific location. As required by the California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York State, New York City, Vermont, Washington State, and Washington DC laws, the pay range for this position is as follows:

The minimum full-time salary range is between $150,000 - $180,000.

This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program, and information on benefits offered is here.

Applications will be accepted through 7th of August. This window may be extended depending on business needs.

Who we are:

At Pearson, our purpose is simple: to help people realize the life they imagine through learning. We believe that every learning opportunity is a chance for a personal breakthrough. We are the world's lifelong learning company. For us, learning isn't just what we do. It's who we are. To learn more: We are Pearson.

Pearson is an Equal Opportunity Employer and a member of E-Verify. Employment decisions are based on qualifications, merit and business need. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status or any other group protected by law. We actively seek qualified candidates who are protected veterans and individuals with disabilities as defined under VEVRAA and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.

If you are an individual with a disability and are unable or limited in your ability to use or access our career site as a result of your disability, you may request reasonable accommodations by emailing [e-mail].

Job Family: TECHNOLOGY