Job Description - Director of Platform Architecture (Azure/ .NET) (2010100) Job Description Director of Platform Architecture (Azure/ .NET) - ( 2010100 ) Description With more than 24,000 employees across the globe, Pearson is the world’s learning company, providing a range of products and services that help people make progress in their lives through learning. Since 2001, our Online & Blended Learning division has reimagined K-12 education with full-time virtual schools for students who want a personalized, more flexible approach to learning. Our flagship products and services include Connections Academy, US-based online public charter schools; International Connections Academy, a global online private school; and Pearson Connexus, our comprehensive online school program for school districts nationwide. Position Summary: The Director of Platform Architecture is responsible for overall design and operating principles for our next-generation virtual learning platform. The software architecture team is responsible for making high-level design choices for the platform in a timely manner to empower the software development teams the guidance they need for building a robust, scalable, maintainable, and extensible software platform. The Director of Platform Architecture guides the architecture team as well as the overall engineering organization towards solid design principles that are timely, cohesive, actionable, and technically feasible with non-functional requirements, particularly operational needs, in mind. Behaviors we are seeking in the Director of Platform Architecture: You are a leader. People listen to you because what you have to say makes sense and is actionable. You are a systems thinker. You look beyond the components of the system and understand how they are all integrated together to form the holistic system. You are proactive. You see problems as or before they arise, and you take action to work with the team to correct them. You listen. You gather data and hear many perspectives to get “ground truth”. You have a bias towards action. You solve problems no matter where they are, and you work with others to rally them towards a solution. The phrase “not my job” is not in your vocabulary. You are concise. You can distill the problem spaces into descriptions both technical and non-technical leaders can understand. You are candid yet compassionate. You don’t shy away from difficult conversations. You are a thought leader. You see beyond the day to day and recommend better ways to do things in the future. You constructively propose better solutions to things that we are currently doing or work with others to hone their good ideas into great ones. In your eyes. “Because that’s how we’ve always done it” is not a good reason to keep doing something. You are collaborative by default. You draw in diverse perspectives, both technical and non-technical. You design systems with end users, both customers and engineers who must maintain the systems, in mind. You care about people and our mission. People are your #1 priority, both employees and customers. Responsibilities: Manages, mentors, coaches, motivates and delegates tasks to architecture team. Drives strategic and tactical technical design on short- and long-term planning horizons. Collaborates with key stakeholders to capture business intent and develop non-functional requirements such as scalability, supportability, testability, etc. Develops and sustains working relationships between architects and development teams, principal engineers, quality assurance. DevOps. Ensure architecture conforms with standard practices using Azure Cloud Technology and Azure Dev Ops. Responsible for the output and deliverables for the architecture team, both system-wide design specifications as well as timely and proactive guidance to software engineering and QA teams as appropriate. Acts as a thought leader and organizational driver for architectural needs as part of the planning process; ensures topics such as technical debt, system hardening, component updates, etc. Owns and drives an architectural runway for major initiatives and necessary system designs and works to prioritize work needed per quarter in partnership with Product Management. Conduct research and rapid prototyping opportunities for new solutions and service offerings. Work with Pearson’s Global Architecture group to align on platforms/tools/integrations for the total OBL architecture. Work with business leadership to establish a technology research strategy and roadmap. Monitors team performance, provides timely and critical feedback on a regular cadence, establishes plans for improvement when necessary, and provides quarterly performance checkpoints with each direct report (at a minimum). Ability to quickly analyze situations and determine teams to delegate responsibility as well as appropriate levels of follow-up and accountability. Works together with other Directors and other leaders across technology and other departments to understand and address gaps or improvement opportunities in their organization. Provides support to DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering for infrastructure and platform hardware refreshes / upgrades as needed. You will be expected to drive several department-wide initiatives that require senior leadership level execution, as well as drive initiatives that cross multiple departments in scope and scale. Responsible for overseeing recruiting, staffing, and hiring, in your department, and support other departments for talent needs. Fosters a culture of continuous improvement in all areas of technology and instills the principles of this culture across technical delivery teams, both onshore and offshore. Accomplishes department and organization missions by completing related tasks as needed. Takes on ownership and drives initiatives across departments and teams that may be larger than engineering specific topics, as needed. Provides detailed and timely status updates to upper management as needed. Maintains technical knowledge and understanding of the latest development methodologies and best practices by participating in educational opportunities, reading professional publications, maintaining personal networks, and participating in professional organizations. Other duties as assigned. Qualifications The individual in this position will be managing multiple teams of architects, both onshore and offshore, and working cross-functionally with a variety of roles in a virtual environment (all employees have a work-from-home option). In order to do this job effectively, the Director of Architecture must be able to: Ability to effectively lead a team of architects for an enterprise-scale platform Ability to proactively see system-level issues with design before they are implemented and guide engineering teams proactively with solid design thinking Experience developing and/or leading teams developing web-based applications. Deep experience in architecting applications using Azure Cloud technologies 4-5 years' experience to .NET framework development 4-5 years' experience in analyzing business requirements, recommending technical solutions, and writing technical specifications and/or requirements 4-5 years' experience managing software developers Experience with recruiting and hiring Demonstrated experience to manage multiple initiatives simultaneously Demonstrated experience to adapt to changing priorities Demonstrated experience managing details as well as consolidate large abstract concepts into clear actionable plans Demonstrated experience in career growth and performance management of employees and teams Excellent verbal and written communication skills #LI-POST Primary Location : US-MD-Columbia Other Locations
