Cengage Learning

Principal Software Engineer

Cengage Learning$117K — $187K *
Education, Government & Non-Profit
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
  • 5 years of technology leadership experience, including developing technology strategies and influencing distributed teams.
  • Solid understanding of generative AI concepts such as LLMs and multimodal models.
  • Hands-on experience with commercial and open-source GenAI technologies.
  • Experience in modernizing legacy architectures and deploying solutions on public cloud platforms.

Responsibilities

  • Lead technology teams in delivering education technology platforms.
  • Design and implement features using an iterative development methodology.
  • Collaborate with product partners to address customer technology needs.
  • Analyze product performance and conduct post-release evaluations.
  • Adopt agile methodologies to drive rapid product delivery.
  • Stay current with emerging technologies to enhance product roadmaps.
  • Cultivate a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.

Benefits

  • Participation in a discretionary incentive bonus program.
  • Comprehensive Total Rewards package to support employees.
Full Job Description
What you'll do here:

Lead all aspects of critical systems for delivering innovative education technology platforms. Specifically, you will lead technology teams in our Internal Operations business unit which includes our Content Systems, Content workflows and Content AI platforms. As a successful technology leader, you will build and lead remote software engineering organizations using agile principles to architect and deliver high availability enterprise software. You will partner closely with product and design teams and lead through data driven insights. You will be obsessing about customer outcomes in every decision made and drive measurable improvements in user engagement.

In this role, you will balance your time between technical composing and product building for software development teams that work on content workflow automation, application development, and platform support. This is a multi-functional and agile team environment. You will work jointly with other technology and product leads to provide direction and leadership to the agile teams. Feel comfortable with situational leadership, able to lead or collaborate as needed.

  • Design, architect, and implement new features and functionality with the expectation that you will own and drive the development using an iterative methodology and deliver products that scale to support our millions of customers.
  • With product partners, customers and other technologists to understand customers' content, learning and technological needs; provide guidance on technology solution options.
  • Communicate sophisticated technical information clearly across product and technology teams, learning designers, interface designers and domain authorities in different parts of the organization.
  • Supervise product performance, analyze performance data, and gather user feedback to continuously iterate and improve the product so our customers enjoy a consistently reliable and high-performing experience with our platforms, available 24/7. Conduct post-release evaluations, retrospectives, and A/B testing to advise future product enhancements and strategic decision-making.
  • Adopt agile methodologies and the principles of a customer centric product model to drive iterative development, continuous improvement, and rapid time-to-market. Work closely with multi-functional teams to define user stories, prioritize backlog items, and ensure timely and high-quality product releases.
  • Stay up to date with emerging technologies and industry trends and integrate relevant advancements into our product roadmaps.
  • Participate in cultivating a high-performance, transparent culture of continuous improvement focused on accountability and results.


Skills you'll need here:

Education & Experience
  • Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and recent, relevant work experience.
  • 5 years of technology leadership experience, including developing technology strategies, fostering innovation, and influencing distributed teams across multiple time zones.


Generative AI & Emerging Technologies
  • Solid understanding of generative AI concepts and frameworks, such as LLMs, multimodal models, prompt engineering, AI agent orchestration, retrieval augmented generation, and vector databases.
  • Hands-on experience integrating or experimenting with commercial and open-source GenAI technologies and toolkits (e.g., OpenAI, Hugging Face, LangChain).
  • Familiarity with agentic workflows and AI-enabled automation for applications such as content management, search, personalization, or workflow optimization.
  • Knowledge of AI safety, responsible AI practices, and content moderation systems
  • Motivation to be up-to-date with advancements in GenAI, MLOps, and digital transformation.


Enterprise Architecture, Software Engineering & Product Delivery
  • Experience in modernizing legacy or monolithic architectures, migrating systems to modular, cloud-native platforms, and implementing hybrid cloud strategies.
  • Consistent track record of architecting and deploying solutions on public cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including storage (S3), compute (EC2, Lambda), containerization (Kubernetes, Docker), and serverless computing and event driven systems
  • Understanding of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools (e.g., Terraform, AWS CDK) for automated, scalable deployments and GitOps / AIOps practics
  • Deep understanding and hands-on experience implementing AWS Well-Architected Framework across all six pillars
  • Skilled in agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe), with the ability to foster high-performing teams and use tools like Jira or Azure DevOps to support efficient, priority-aligned delivery.


Content Operations & Domain Expertise:
  • Understanding of content management systems, digital asset management, and content delivery networks
  • Experience with content workflow automation, metadata management, and content versioning systems
  • Knowledge of content personalization, search systems, and recommendation engines
  • Familiarity with content creation tools, authoring systems, and publishing platforms
  • Understanding of educational technology domains and learning content requirements


Collaboration & Communication
  • Strong interpersonal and collaboration skills-capable of partnering effectively with multi-functional teams, including product, build, and engineering, in distributed and remote-first environments.
  • Experienced in breaking down complicated technical concepts for diverse technical and non-technical audiences, including executives and partners.
  • Proactive approach to learning new technologies, embracing experimentation, and incorporating emerging practices into platforms and teams.
  • Commitment to continuous improvement for both product and engineering culture.


Compensation

At Cengage Group, we take great pride in our commitment to providing a comprehensive and rewarding Total Rewards package designed to support and empower our employees. Click here to learn more about our Total Rewards Philosophy.

The full base pay range has been provided for this position. Individual base pay will vary based on work schedule, qualifications, experience, internal equity, and geographic location. Sales roles often incorporate a significant incentive compensation program beyond this base pay range.

In this position, you will be eligible to participate in the company's discretionary incentive bonus program. This position's bonus target amount, which is not guaranteed and is dependent on individual performance and overall company results among other factors, is provided below.

20% Annual: Individual Target

$117,100.00 - $187,300.00 USD

About Cengage Learning

Cengage is an American educational content, technology, and services company for the higher education, K-12, professional, and library markets. It operates in more than 20 countries around the world. The company provides print and digital textbooks, instructor supplements, online reference databases, distance learning courses, test preparation materials, corporate training courses, career assessment tools, and other educational materials. Cengage was founded in 2007 as a merger between Thomson Learning and Gale. In 2018, the company filed for bankruptcy and emerged with a new ownership structure. Cengage has approximately 5,000 employees and generates over $1.5 billion in annual revenue.
Learn more about Cengage Learning
Size
5,000 employees
Industry
Founded
1994

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