Lead Backend Engineer

Pearson

We are the world’s learning company with more than 24,000 employees operating in 70 countries. We combine world-class educational content and assessment, powered by services and technology, to enable more effective teaching and personalized learning at scale. We believe that wherever learning flourishes so do people.

Summary

We are looking for a passionate AI back-end engineer, to be embedded in the AI product solutions team, that will contribute to the creation of innovative A.I. experiences in education. Our mission is to deliver the development of AI-first, outcome-driven products to improve learning. The position provides the opportunity to engage in delivering cutting-edge solutions within a cross-functional team. Above all, your work will contribute to developing products that have an impact on millions of learners around the globe.

As an AI back-end engineer you will:

  • Analyze & Design – Design solutions that effectively model the customer’s requirements, taking into account performance, maintainability/complexity, market trends and innovation, controlling costs, system robustness and scalability, and long term quality initiatives. Follow established design patterns and recommend new design patterns.
  • Implement – Implement designs following Pearson coding standards and industry best practices.
  • Review – Participates in and reviewing requirements, design, code, and test case (both manual and automated) reviews
  • Test – Work closely with other teams (e.g., QA, devOps, configuration management, end users) to release high quality software. Create testable code and implement automated unit, integration, and functional tests as part of all development activities.
  • Document – Complete project documentation as required, including logging status, risk, progress, and effort on assigned work

Qualifications

Required Education & Experience

  • B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent, with strong fundamentals and problem solving skills
  • Experience in the delivery of artificial intelligence experiences within software or mobile platform. I.e TensorFlow or similar platforms.
  • 7+ years experience with complete development process: design, test, build, deploy, repeat in a cloud environment
  • 5+ years experience with AWS or Google Cloud platform components such as Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, Cloud CDN, Cloud Pub/Sub, Stackdriver
  • 5+ years experience using industry standard DevOps tools (CI/CD, Jenkins, GoCD, Git, scripting, Gradle, Maven, Docker/containers, Kubernetes, etc…)
  • Familiarity with API development, HTTP, async processing, parallel processing, distributed computing
  • Expert experience with programming languages, at least one of (GOLang, Java, Python/SymPy)
  • 5+ years experience with Analytics, logging, monitoring, metrics (SDKs from Firebase and Google is a plus)
  • 5+ years experience creating APIs, Web Services (RESTful), API documentation.
  • Familiar with Appium, SauceLab testing platforms
  • Experience building and maintaining scalable solutions in a distributed environment.
  • Solid understanding of the Platform / Infrastructure as a Service (PaaS / Iaas) model in the online environment, and how to utilize and optimize these services to manage costs and scalability.
  • Agile methodologies (e.g. Scrum, Kanban, XP, etc.)
  • Experience in defining and completing non-functional requirements such as Accessibility, Security, I18N, Performance, and/or Scalability
  • Demonstrated passion for infrastructure as code, automation, continuous improvement, and a “can do” attitude.
  • Excellent verbal & written communication skills
  • Self-starter, able to work solo and part of a cross functional team
  • Work from our office in Centennial, Colorado interfacing with partners globally
  • Ability to work with 3rd party vendors, manage interactions and project needs

The anticipated starting salary range for Colorado-based individuals expressing interest in this position is $130,000-$170,000. This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program.