Pearson on cord

Pearson

Head of Software Engineering

External position
Hiring internally for Pearson?
EdTech · Publishing
We add life to a lifetime of learning.
Posted
2 weeks ago
Checked
cord regularly checks that external positions are still open
2 hours ago

Skills & Experience

Job roles: Head of Engineering
Experience level: Lead, Leadership
Core skills considered: Agile, Cloud Computing, APIs, Security and Compliance
Other skills considered: Technical Direction, Building Teams, Project Management, Stakeholder Management

Logistics

Base salary: Undisclosed
Some companies on cord are unable to disclose salaries publicly due to internal company policies. Message the company for salary information.
Employment type: Permanent
Remote working: Hybrid
Visa sponsorship: Not available

Job Description

Pearson is looking for an exceptional Head of Software Engineering to lead the strategy, delivery and operation of technology across our General Qualifications, Vocational Qualifications and high-profile government contract portfolios.

This is a substantial senior technology leadership role with end-to-end accountability for globally distributed software engineering, DevOps, quality engineering, application operations and technology service teams.

You will lead through an established management structure, as well as through matrix teams and strategic partners. Your focus will be on setting direction, aligning resources and investment, strengthening leadership capability, improving delivery and creating clear accountability across a complex technology portfolio.

You will translate business, product, customer, contractual and regulatory priorities into a clear and integrated technology roadmap. At the same time, you will remain accountable for the secure, accurate and reliable operation of Pearson's existing qualifications services.

Our technology supports some of the most important and time-critical activities within the qualifications lifecycle, including:

  • Entries and registrations
  • Assessment delivery
  • Scanning
  • Marking and moderation
  • Awarding and grading
  • Results delivery
  • Certification
  • Post-results services

These services operate through fixed, highly visible and business-critical periods. The successful candidate will therefore bring strong experience of production readiness, operational resilience, capacity planning, service performance, incident and problem management, business continuity, disaster recovery and critical-event support.

Alongside responsibility for existing services, you will work closely with Pearson's multi-year Qualifications Platform Transformation programme.

You will help to modernise complex legacy and cloud-based services, reduce technical debt and introduce new digital capabilities without compromising live operations, data integrity, regulatory compliance or customer outcomes.

The portfolio also includes technology supporting a major government contract. You will be accountable for technology-related contractual milestones, service levels, controls, evidence, reporting, risk mitigation and client outcomes.

You will act as a senior technology liaison for clients and regulators, providing clear and credible assurance regarding readiness, service performance, controls, risks and remediation.

This is a genuine senior leadership appointment requiring someone who can combine software engineering leadership, operational excellence, technology transformation, supplier management and executive-level stakeholder engagement.

Key responsibilities

  • Own the technology strategy, roadmap and delivery outcomes across the General Qualifications, Vocational Qualifications and government contract portfolios.
  • Align technology investment, resources and execution with Pearson Qualifications' priorities, product roadmaps, customer needs and contractual commitments.
  • Ensure qualifications and assessment services are delivered securely, accurately, reliably and on time across the complete operational lifecycle.
  • Lead globally distributed software engineering, DevOps, quality engineering, application operations and technology service capabilities.
  • Set clear functional priorities and translate business goals into executable plans, measurable outcomes and defined accountabilities.
  • Provide leadership across direct, matrix, partner-led and globally distributed technology teams.
  • Lead technology delivery for high-stakes regulated government services, with accountability for contractual milestones, service levels, evidence, reporting, compliance and risk mitigation.
  • Act as a senior technology liaison for clients and regulators, representing Pearson's technology position and providing credible assurance regarding readiness, service performance, controls, risks and remediation.
  • Own operational excellence and production readiness across critical examination, marking, awarding and results periods.
  • Provide leadership across service performance, capacity, resilience, change and release control, incident and problem management, business continuity and disaster recovery.
  • Ensure significant incidents are managed effectively, with clear communication, root-cause analysis, lessons learned and sustained improvement.
  • Guide the modernisation of complex legacy and cloud-based services while protecting live qualification delivery, operational continuity and data integrity.
  • Reduce technical debt and operational risk through informed investment decisions, clear prioritisation and strong engineering governance.
  • Ensure effective transitions and handovers into support and operational teams as new technology capabilities and services are introduced.
  • Champion modern engineering and delivery practices, including agile and product-led ways of working, DevSecOps, secure-by-design architecture, automation, observability and API-led integration.
  • Support the responsible use of AI and agentic software development while maintaining appropriate quality, security, privacy and operational controls.
  • Govern portfolio-level architecture, software quality, lifecycle management and engineering standards.
  • Ensure technology solutions are secure, scalable, reliable, maintainable, supportable, documented and aligned with Pearson's enterprise technology patterns.
  • Build a capable, inclusive and accountable engineering organisation through clear direction, coaching, succession planning, skills development and effective leadership of managers.
  • Strengthen leadership depth and create sustainable delivery capability across internal and partner teams.
  • Lead strategic supplier and partner relationships, ensuring delivery quality, knowledge transfer, capability development, commercial accountability and value for money.
  • Intervene decisively and constructively when external supplier performance falls below expectations.
  • Work closely with colleagues across Product, Programme Delivery, Operations, Assessment, Qualifications Processing, Customer Services, Security, Privacy, Architecture, Finance, Commercial, Regulatory and Transformation.
  • Own capital and operating expenditure across the portfolio.
  • Prioritise investment, manage forecasts and contribute to business cases, annual planning and Pearson's longer-term technology strategy.
  • Ensure compliance with internal policies and external regulatory, contractual, security, privacy, accessibility, audit and quality requirements.
  • Maintain appropriate technology controls and evidence, addressing material gaps promptly and transparently.
  • Provide clear executive reporting across delivery, service health, budget, workforce, supplier performance, risks and dependencies.
  • Escalate emerging concerns early and provide senior stakeholders with the information required to make timely decisions.

About you

You will be an established senior technology and software engineering leader who is equally comfortable setting strategy, leading organisational change and remaining accountable for the operation of complex live services.

You will understand that successful technology transformation is not simply about introducing new platforms. It requires disciplined operational leadership, strong engineering decisions, effective risk management and the ability to modernise safely without compromising existing customer, contractual or regulatory commitments.

You will have experience simplifying a complex technology portfolio, establishing clear priorities and creating confidence with executives, clients, regulators, suppliers and delivery teams.

You will combine empathy and inclusive leadership with clear accountability. You will know how to support and strengthen teams that have worked through demanding operational circumstances, while maintaining delivery focus and rebuilding sustainable capability.

You will be able to create an environment where experienced leaders understand their responsibilities, make effective decisions and remain focused on the outcomes that matter most.

Direct experience within qualifications, assessment or education technology would be valuable, but it is not essential.

We are interested in senior leaders from a broad range of technology-led, regulated or contractually controlled environments who can demonstrate the scale, complexity and accountability required for this role.

Relevant backgrounds could include:

  • Qualifications and assessment technology
  • Awarding organisations
  • Education technology
  • Government technology and public services
  • Financial services and payments
  • Healthcare technology
  • Utilities
  • Telecommunications
  • Transport
  • Major digital platforms
  • Enterprise software
  • Other high-stakes
Head of Software Engineering at Pearson
Position posted 2 weeks ago

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Starling Bank on cord

Starling Bank

Full Stack Engineer (ML Ops)

London, UK
FinTech · Banking · Finance
A better bank for everyone
Active
over 6 months ago
Responds to
0% of requests
Responds in
1h 55m
Requests
7 pending

Skills & Experience

Job roles: Full Stack
Experience level: Mid, Senior
Core skills considered: Java, React, Redux, AWS, JavaScript

Logistics

Base salary: £70K - £110K
Employment type: Permanent
Remote working: Hybrid (up to 2 remote days p/w)
Visa sponsorship: Not available

Job Description

Starling is the UK’s first and leading digital bank on a mission to fix banking! Our vision is fast technology, fair service, and honest values. All at the tap of a phone, all the time.

Starling is the UK’s first and leading digital bank on a mission to fix banking! We built a new kind of bank because we knew technology had the power to help people save, spend and manage their money in a new and transformative way.

We’re a fully licensed UK bank with the culture and spirit of a fast-moving, disruptive tech company. We’re a bank, but better: fairer, easier to use and designed to demystify money for everyone. We employ more than 3,000 people across our London, Southampton, Cardiff and Manchester offices.

Our technologists are at the very heart of Starling and enjoy working in a fast-paced environment that is all about building things, creating new stuff, and disruptive technology that keeps us on the cutting edge of fintech. We operate a flat structure to empower you to make decisions regardless of what your primary responsibilities may be, innovation and collaboration will be at the core of everything you do. Help is never far away in our open culture, you will find support in your team and from across the business, we are in this together!

The way to thrive and shine within Starling is to be a self-driven individual and be able to take full ownership of everything around you: From building things, designing, discovering, to sharing knowledge with your colleagues and making sure all processes are efficient and productive to deliver the best possible results for our customers. Our purpose is underpinned by five Starling values: Listen, Keep It Simple, Do The Right Thing, Own It, and Aim For Greatness.

Hybrid Working

We have a Hybrid approach to working here at Starling - our preference is that you're located within a commutable distance of one of our offices so that we're able to interact and collaborate in person. We don't like to mandate how much you visit the office and work from home, that's to be agreed upon between you and your manager.

Our Data Environment

Our Data teams are excited about the value of data within the business, powers our product decisions to improve things for our customers and enhance effective and agile decision making, regardless of what their primary tech stack may be. Hear from the team in our latest blogs or our case studies with Women in Tech.

We are looking for talented data professionals at all levels to join the team. We value people being engaged and caring about customers, caring about the code they write and the contribution they make to Starling. People with a broad ability to apply themselves to a multitude of problems and challenges, who can work across teams do great things here at Starling, to continue changing banking for good.

Requirements

We have built our entire banking platform in house and mostly in Java. We are looking for people who want to work on building the tooling that is used by our engineers on a daily basis.

We are looking for people who are truly full stack, and are as comfortable polishing their javascript front end as they are debugging the innards of their java applications database interactions, or standing up infrastructure with terraform. We are looking for people who can:

  • Design REST apis.
  • Code backend services, ideally using Java, or another other server side compiled language.
  • Develop modern front ends, ideally using React and Redux.
  • Get their code into the cloud and support it there, ideally on AWS.
  • Believe in clean coding, simple solutions, automated testing and continuous deployment.
  • Like to take ownership of a feature from the original idea through to live.
  • Think (like us) that a small number of empowered developers is the right way to deliver software.

Company Benefits

  • 33 days holiday (including flexible bank holidays)
  • An extra day’s holiday for your birthday
  • 16 hours paid volunteering time a year
  • Part-time and/or flexible hours available for most roles
  • Salary sacrifice, company enhanced pension scheme
  • Life insurance at 4x your salary
  • Hybrid/remote working
  • Private Medical Insurance with VitalityHealth including mental health support and cancer care. Partner benefits include discounts with Waitrose, Mr&Mrs Smith and Peloton
  • Generous family-friendly policies
  • Varied social groups set up and run by our employees
  • Perkbox membership giving access to retail discounts, a wellness platform for physical and mental health, and weekly free and boosted perks
  • Access to initiatives like Cycle to Work, Salary Sacrificed Gym partnerships and Electric Vehicle (EV) leasing

Full details are available on our careers site

Interview Process

Interviewing is a two way process and we want you to have the time and opportunity to get to know us, as much as we are getting to know you! Our interviews are conversational and we want to get the best from you, so come with questions and be curious. In general you can expect the below, following a chat with one of our Talent Team:

  • Stage 1 - 30 mins with one of the team
  • Stage 2 - Take home challenge
  • Stage 3 - 90 mins technical interview with two team members
  • Stage 3 - 45 min final with an executive and a member of the people team
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