{"id":3659956,"url":"https://alion.io/job/pearson-principal-software-engineer-3","title":"Principal Software Engineer","company":{"id":34029,"name":"Pearson","domain":"pearson.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/pearson","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Oracle","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":80,"open_postings":22,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.818,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":26,"computed_at":"2026-11-03T05:54:40Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":150000,"max":170000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":170000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":12,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Amazon CloudWatch","optional":false},{"name":"Amazon ECS","optional":false},{"name":"Amazon S3","optional":false},{"name":"Apache Kafka","optional":false},{"name":"API Gateway","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"AWS Fargate","optional":false},{"name":"AWS Lambda","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"GitHub Actions","optional":false},{"name":"Java","optional":false},{"name":"New Relic","optional":false},{"name":"Node JS","optional":false},{"name":"React.js","optional":false},{"name":"Spring Boot","optional":false},{"name":"Terraform","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false},{"name":"AWS Bedrock","optional":true},{"name":"Azure","optional":true},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true},{"name":"LLM","optional":true},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":true},{"name":"OpenSearch","optional":true},{"name":"Python","optional":true},{"name":"Redis","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-03T00:29:44Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-03","last_verified_at":"2026-11-04T01:58:13Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":1,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":1},"description":"We are modernizing Pearson's content platform into a set of shared platform services. You will be one of the principal engineers leading that work hands-on. You design the target systems and move content and users onto them safely. Full stack here goes beyond front end and back end: the work spans user interfaces, workflow orchestration, AI, backend services, and cloud infrastructure. You will stay deep in design and implementation while raising the technical judgment and execution of the engineers around you.\nWhat you will own\nThe technical plan and delivery for several technology tracks, such as consolidations, migrations, and other large-scale initiatives, from target design through launch.\n\nMigrations of large volumes of content and data, such as assessment items or media assets, with verification that nothing is lost or broken for downstream products.\n\nShared capabilities that should be built once and used everywhere, like media handling, search, rendering, or AI content services, exposed through clean APIs.\n\nAn honest, costed view of the technical debt in your systems and what to fix first.\n\nEscalated incidents on your systems: you are the technical point of contact when one has business impact, and you stay on it through root cause and the fix that prevents a repeat.\n\nSecurity and stability for the applications you own. That covers runtime and framework upgrades, vulnerability and penetration test remediation, secure data handling, and disaster recovery plans that are documented, exercised, and audit ready.\n\nShared standards across teams for design patterns, tooling, reliability, observability, performance, and evaluation, including how AI-powered workflows are measured, tested, and kept safe.\n\nThe long-term technical roadmap for your area, and the subject-matter expertise that comes with it.\n\nHow you will work\nThis is a hands-on engineering role, not an architecture role. You will not be embedded in a single team; you will work across the platform on initiatives and technical problems that matter most to leadership. You own the designs, the code on the critical path, and the engineering calls that decide whether an initiative succeeds. You should enjoy defining the problem as much as solving it.\nWrite production code where the risk is highest and review the hardest changes from other engineers.\n\nUnblock hard technical problems that span systems, teams, or domains.\n\nWork with engineering managers, product managers, architects, and quality engineering. When long-term initiatives and current delivery compete for the same people or code, make the tradeoff visible and help decide it.\n\nWork directly with the people who use the platform across Pearson's lines of business, and separate the foundational problems from the incremental ones before the team commits.\n\nSpot opportunities that cut across team and product boundaries, bring stakeholders to a shared direction, and carry the work from exploration through launch and iteration.\n\nMake high-consequence technical decisions under ambiguity, balancing speed and learning against scalability, simplicity, and long-term maintainability. Hold views grounded in evidence, and change them when the evidence changes.\n\nEvaluate frameworks, tools, and vendors, and pilot practices like contract testing, automated regression, and zero-downtime migration before teams adopt them.\n\nRun technical feasibility reviews for new AI capabilities, and work with internal teams and external partners to assess and co-develop them.\n\nUse AI coding tools daily, particularly for large upgrades and refactors, and help teams adopt them with sound review habits.\n\nAct as a technical multiplier: review critical designs, mentor engineers, and improve engineering practices. Success includes the senior engineers around you becoming owners of these systems too.\n\nMinimum qualifications\n12+ years building and operating production software, including 4+ years at staff or principal level, or as technical lead across several teams or a large multi-service system.\n\nLed a re-platforming or legacy migration of a production system with active users and data, through to switching off the old system.\n\nLed the design and delivery of technically complex, user-facing systems.\n\nUpgraded or migrated production systems off an end-of-life runtime or framework.\n\nFull-stack depth in our core stack: Java and Spring Boot, Node.js and TypeScript, and React, with MongoDB and event-driven services (SQS, SNS, Kafka) behind APIs with many consumers.\n\nProduction experience on AWS, especially ECS Fargate, Lambda, S3, and API Gateway, with observability (New Relic, CloudWatch), CI/CD (GitHub Actions), and infrastructure as code (Terraform).\n\nWrites clear design documents and migration plans, explains tradeoffs to engineering, product, and executive audiences, and influences without authority, especially when the decision carries real uncertainty. We will ask you to walk us through a document you wrote.\n\nBachelor's degree in Computer Science or an equivalent combination of education and experience.\n\nPreferred qualifications\nContent platform experience: authoring and content management, digital asset management, content transformation pipelines, content delivery, or assessment systems.\n\nContent and learning standards such as EPUB, XML/XSLT, QTI, or LTI.\n\nBuilt or operated an LLM-backed feature in production, using Python and services such as AWS Bedrock or Azure OpenAI, and understands the problems AI brings: nondeterminism, evaluation, latency, and safety.\n\nMoved a product off a commercial platform, such as a DAM or CMS, onto in-house services.\n\nSearch and caching with OpenSearch or Solr and Redis.\n\nWorked with distributed teams and delivery partners across US and India time zones.\n\nAbout PSG-CP\nPearson is the world's lifelong learning company. PSG-CP (Pearson Software Group - Content Platform) builds and runs the platform behind how Pearson creates, delivers, and measures learning content, for every Pearson line of business.\nApply now and help shape the future of learning.\nCompensation at Pearson is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and specific location. As required by the California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York State, New York City, Vermont, Washington State, and Washington DC laws, the pay range for this position is as follows:\nThe full-time salary range is between $150,000 - 170,000.\nThis position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program, and information on benefits offered is here.\nApplications will be accepted through 12th of December. This window may be extended depending on business needs.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6724,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":12,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":true},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["EdTech Platforms","Publishing","E-learning"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-03T03:21:06Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":70,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.695,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":26,"reasons":["conf:2","stale_co","wave","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-11-03T05:54:40Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":170000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/pearson-principal-software-engineer-3","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/pearson-principal-software-engineer-3.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-04T05:36:12Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":8769,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-05T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":34029},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=34029"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fpearson-principal-software-engineer-3"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fpearson-principal-software-engineer-3"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fpearson-principal-software-engineer-3"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/pearson-principal-software-engineer-3\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fpearson-principal-software-engineer-3"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3659956}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"pearson.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3659956},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. Docs: https://alion.io/developers"}}