Software Engineering Manager

Pearson is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a team within its Enterprise Learning & Skills engineering organization. The role focuses on people leadership, delivery execution, technical guidance, issue resolution, onboarding, process improvement, and responsible use of AI-assisted engineering tools for a global API-driven digital credentials platform.

Responsibilities:

• Lead, coach, and support a team of 5–8 engineers building Ruby on Rails services and React frontends, owning the team's well-being, performance, and immediate output
• Plan and allocate daily and sprint work, monitor progress against delivery schedules, and keep projects on track through clear priorities and timely course corrections
• Troubleshoot obstacles, clarify requirements, and coordinate handoffs across engineers, teams, and vendors so blockers are resolved quickly and together
• Triage bugs and production issues with attention to detail, minimizing disruption to the customers who rely on our platform
• Maintain standards of quality and consistency within our defined processes, including coding and QA standards, code review coverage, test thoroughness, and team documentation
• Give real-time, constructive feedback; run regular 1:1s; and celebrate team milestones while openly recognizing individual contributions
• Own the onboarding and skill development of new team members, reducing ramp-up time and onboarding errors
• Identify and introduce process improvements at the team level, within defined limits, and escalate unresolved or higher-impact issues to senior engineering leadership in a timely way
• Champion the responsible use of AI-assisted development tools for coding, testing, documentation, and debugging across the team
• Uphold secure, ethical, and resilient engineering practices, including data and information security expectations, across everything the team ships

Requirements:

• 5+ years of professional software development experience and 2+ years managing or formally leading a software engineering team
• Working familiarity with our core stack (Ruby on Rails, React, AWS, PostgreSQL) and with API management, cloud computing, DevOps practices, and software design, with enough technical acumen to guide discussions and evaluate trade-offs
• Proven track record of running a team's daily delivery reliably: consistent adherence to coding and QA standards, accurate and timely task completion, and dependable schedules
• Strong problem-solving skills, with a habit of identifying challenges early, evaluating options, and driving practical resolutions
• Exceptional collaboration and communication, equally effective with engineers, non-technical stakeholders, and external vendors
• Experience onboarding and developing engineers, with evidence of shortened ramp-up times and growing team capability
• Sound judgment about when to resolve issues locally and when to escalate, and a record of escalating clearly and promptly
• Adaptability and a commitment to continuous learning as the team, platform, and tooling evolve
• Strong understanding of information and data security fundamentals and an ethical, customer-centric approach to decisions
• You should be comfortable using AI tools in your own work and confident guiding a team that uses them for coding, testing, documentation, and learning
• Hands-on background as a Rails, React, or full-stack engineer before moving into management
• Experience designing, deploying, or operating production workloads on AWS and Azure, and familiarity with CI/CD and automated deployment practices
• Experience managing work delivered in partnership with third-party or vendor teams
• Experience with resilience planning, incident management, or on-call processes for customer-facing systems
• Experience with distributed or service-oriented systems and asynchronous, event-driven communication between services
• Experience introducing AI agents or automated AI tooling into an engineering team's workflow