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Senior Software Developer- Item Assist product

Pearson
Full-time
Remote
United States
$120 - $135 USD yearly
Description

Summary:


As a Senior Software Developer, you will be the most senior engineer of a 3-person dev team focused on adding new “Item Assist” features using C# and Angular into the ExamDeveloper web app. This role is expected to evolve in two parts. During this initial build-out period which we anticipate will last 1 year, you’ll direct the work of the 3-person USA-based team of developers, QA consultants in India, and additional temporary Dev and QA consultants. Roughly 2/3rds of your time will be writing code as an individual contributor and the other 1/3rd of your time will be on leadership and supervision tasks. You will supervise all engineering activities of the team, including technical decision-making, creating team processes, and leading code review. You will provide work direction as part of Agile software development processes and serve as the team’s Scrum Master. Though you will supervise the work of other engineers on the team, this is an individual contributor role and HR management responsibilities of other engineers would be with someone else.


After this initial build-out period is complete, your role shifts to be 100% individual contributor at a Senior level and your focus areas will expand beyond just Item Assist. You’ll continue to provide technical leadership to the team but covering all of ExamDeveloper, not just the Item Assist features. You’ll be part of a larger team at this stage.


The Tool:


Our Item Assist tool started off as a standalone prototype tool for letting users use generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) to create test questions. Building upon the success of the prototype we are incorporating these AI interactions into Pearson VUE’s ExamDeveloper item authoring tool (https://www.pearsonvue.com/us/en/test-owners/develop.html). ExamDeveloper is a web-based exam development platform that allows our customers to write, review and manage questions on their exams. ExamDeveloper is the leading web-based tool for creating tests to certify test-takers in the professional skills they require. Customers rely on ExamDeveloper to support their entire workflow around question writing, collaborative review, scoring, and test management.


Special note: this role and this specific team will not be doing AI-based development work. Other engineering teams at Pearson are working on the AI capabilities that power the Item Assist product. The Item Assist features in ExamDeveloper represent the user interface and the application experience for our customers. Therefore, skills like machine learning, prompting, large language models, etc are not applicable to this role, but some knowledge about AI concepts could be beneficial.


In this role you’ll focus on the new Item Assist features in ExamDeveloper but will also work on other ExamDeveloper development efforts. You will partner with the Product Manager to bring their vision to reality and work alongside the Architect, Project Manager, and Business Analyst.


ExamDeveloper’s primary tech stack is .NET and C# on the backend and Angular on the frontend hosted in Microsoft Azure. Item Assist will use an in-house Angular-based UI framework. You’ll work with containerized services orchestrated by Kubernetes and Microsoft SQL Server. We strongly prefer Angular experience because it is an important technology for this product.


Work Location: 


REMOTE - United States , required to work mostly Central time zone normal business hours.


Responsibilities:



  • Develop new features and other technical implementation work (see notes above for allocations for this that vary over time)

  • Make technical decisions on behalf of the team with partnership of the Architect

  • Provide leadership for the team of engineers in an Agile software development approach

  • Create work processes for the team and continually evolve them as needs change

  • Enforce high standards of software development to achieve quality

  • Coach other team members to help them grow and bring out their best work

  • Plan the team’s work and estimate future desired work

  • Act as Scrum Master of the Agile team

  • Release and On-call duties -- Participate in release deployment activities and a rotating on-call escalation system during non-business hours.


Required Education and Experience:



  • 5+ years work experience as a software developer

  • Experience supervising the work of technical staff either formally or informally

  • 2+ years experience with Angular 

  • 2+ years experience with C# 

  • Bachelor degree in Computer Science, MIS, or equivalent technology discipline


Desired Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:



  • Relational databases

  • DevOps workflows related to cloud-based development and deployment

  • Experience in an Agile software development environment

  • Demonstrated technical leadership

  • Clear communication skills to various types of audiences

  • History of continuous improvement




Compensation 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 Colorado, California, Washington State, New York State and New York City laws, the pay range for this position is as follows: 


The minimum full-time salary range is between $120k- 135k. 


This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program, and information on benefits offered is here.