VP, Core Systems & Scalable AI Platforms

Cengage Group; United States; Remote; USD 193,000 - 308,000; Full time

Job summary

Cengage Group is seeking a Vice President, Core Systems within Product Technology to lead the organization responsible for shared tech capabilities enabling Cengage's digital products to scale across markets. You will guide teams dedicated to core capabilities and advance the Core Systems strategy, building, buying, or partnering to implement reusable capabilities.

Collaborate with Digital Product, Technology, DevOps, and Information Security to modernize the tech ecosystem, simplify services,

Qualifications

• 15+ years software/enterprise technology experience and leadership
• 8+ years senior engineering leadership, leading distributed teams
• Experience defining platform/shared-services strategies across complex portfolios
• Experience running high-availability enterprise systems with reliability targets
• Experience leading AI-enabled product platforms, personalization, or data capabilities
• Modernizing legacy platforms into cloud-native architectures
• Consolidation efforts to reduce technical debt and cost
• Experience managing budgets, vendor relationships, and portfolio investments
• Excellent executive communication, stakeholder alignment
• Strong leadership, talent development and succession planning

Responsibilities

• Own technology strategy, roadmap and operating model for core systems
• Advance build-once, scale everywhere strategy with reusable capabilities
• Drive modernization using AI, cloud-native architecture, API-first integration
• Establish shared AI infrastructure and platform services for smart learning
• Partner with product/business leaders to drive shared capability adoption
• Drive operational excellence with CI/CD, observability and incident management
• Evaluate build/buy/partner options and provide cost visibility

Skills

15+ years of software/enterprise tech

8+ years senior engineering leadership

Platform/shared-services strategy

High-availability enterprise systems

AI-enabled product platforms

Cloud-native architectures

Consolidation and debt reduction

Budget and vendor management

Executive communication

Leadership of leaders

Job description

Cengage Group is seeking a Vice President, Core Systems within Product Technology to lead the organization responsible for shared tech capabilities enabling Cengage's digital products to scale across markets. You will guide teams dedicated to core capabilities and advance the Core Systems strategy, building, buying, or partnering to implement reusable capabilities.

Collaborate with Digital Product, Technology, DevOps, and Information Security to modernize the tech ecosystem, simplify services,