Tech Lead/Manager, Software Engineering (Remote)

Overview

Lead a software engineering team building tools for the Cengage Learning Platforms (CLP), defining an AI-first roadmap with a focus on quality and accessibility, working as technical lead within the Product Operating Model.

What you'll do

• Lead, coach, and grow a high-performing engineering team focused on quality, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Reimagine and optimize software delivery processes using modern tools, automation, and generative AI.
• Engage in POM Discovery activities, including continuous internal and external customer engagement, to derive solutions meeting end user, company, and technology goals.
• Track quality and efficiency improvements through well instrumented SDLC tools and report progress to executive teams.
• Balance technical debt and maintenance activities alongside new feature development within each sprint.
• Work with partners and customers to establish and handle product backlogs, product estimates and budgets.
• Stay in front of emerging technologies and industry trends to inject continuous innovation into product roadmaps.
• Collaborate with product and design teams as technical lead, focusing on customer outcomes through frequent stakeholder engagement and data-driven insights.

What you'll need

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and recent, relevant work experience.
• 2+ years of technology leadership experience, including developing technology strategies, fostering innovation, and leading globally distributed teams.
• Working knowledge of AI concepts, including machine learning, LLMs, multimodal models, prompt engineering, AI agents, RAG, and vector databases.
• Hands-on experience integrating or experimenting with commercial and open-source GenAI technologies and toolkits (e.g., coding assistants, OpenAI, Hugging Face, LangChain).
• Experience in modernizing legacy or monolithic architectures, migrating systems to modular, cloud-native platforms, and implementing hybrid cloud strategies.
• Ability to design and develop APIs that integrate legacy systems with modern solutions.
• Comfortable designing and deploying solutions on AWS, GCP, or Azure, including containers, serverless, and cloud storage/compute services.
• Proven ability to build secure, resilient, scalable, high-availability enterprise systems for global user bases.
• Strong experience with agile delivery (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe) and tooling such as Jira or Azure DevOps.
• Demonstrated success organizing teams and delivery around a Product Operating Model.
• Strong hands-on expertise with Java development (5 years minimum).
• Strong hands-on expertise with React or other modern front-end technology (5 years minimum).
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills in distributed, remote-first environments.
• Ability to clearly communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences, including executives.

Details

• Location: Massachusetts, USA.
• Work mode: Remote.
• Base pay range: $101,900.00 - $163,000.00 USD, plus eligibility for a discretionary incentive bonus with a 15% annual individual target.