VP, Core Systems: Scale, AI-Driven Modernization

Cengage Group; Hagåtña (GU); On-site; USD 193,000 - 308,000; Full time

Job summary

Cengage Group is seeking a Vice President, Core Systems in Product Technology to lead shared capabilities enabling digital products to scale across markets. You will guide AI-enabled modernization, cloud-native architecture, API-first integration, and governance.

You’ll build high-performing distributed teams and drive reliability, security, and strategic vendor decisions. You will partner across Digital Product, Technology, DevOps, Security, and Legal to ensure global privacy, data protection,

Qualifications

• 15+ years in software, platform, or enterprise tech with leadership of shared services or platforms.
• 8+ years of senior engineering leadership across distributed teams and multiple domains.
• Experience defining platform/shared-services strategies across complex product portfolios.
• Experience running high-availability enterprise systems with reliability targets and SLA accountability.
• Experience leading AI-enabled product platforms, personalization services, or enterprise data capabilities.
• Experience modernizing legacy platforms into cloud-native, modular architectures.
• Proven consolidation work reducing debt, operational burden, and cost.
• Experience managing budgets, vendor relationships, and platform investments at scale.
• Excellent executive communication to align senior leaders and stakeholders.
• Strong organizational leadership, talent development, and succession planning.
• Familiarity with education technology and digital learning platforms is a plus.
• Understanding of AI infrastructure, retrieval-augmented generation, security, and observability.

Responsibilities

• Own the technology strategy, roadmap, and operating model for core systems aligned to Product Technology priorities.
• Advance a build-once, scale-everywhere strategy by creating reusable capabilities for scalability and faster time-to-market.
• Modernize Core Systems with generative AI, cloud-native architecture, API-first integration, automation, and observability.
• Establish shared AI infrastructure and platform services enabling safe, adaptive learning experiences.
• Partner with product and business leaders to drive adoption of shared capabilities while tailoring for markets.
• Drive engineering excellence with CI/CD, incident management, workload forecasting, and strong leadership development.
• Evaluate build/buy/partner options, ensuring transparency of costs, reliability, and long-term ownership.

Skills

Leadership experience

Senior leadership

Platform strategy

Reliability

AI-enabled platforms

Cloud-native modernization

Consolidation

Budget management

Executive comms

Leadership of Leaders

EdTech familiarity

AI infrastructure

Observability

Job description

Cengage Group is seeking a Vice President, Core Systems in Product Technology to lead shared capabilities enabling digital products to scale across markets. You will guide AI-enabled modernization, cloud-native architecture, API-first integration, and governance.

You’ll build high-performing distributed teams and drive reliability, security, and strategic vendor decisions. You will partner across Digital Product, Technology, DevOps, Security, and Legal to ensure global privacy, data protection,