Advanced Specialist, Software Engineer
Job Title: Advanced Specialist, Software Engineer Career Architecture Role: Software Engineer Career Architecture Tier: IC25 (Advanced Specialist)
Job Summary: As an Advanced Specialist Software Engineer, you drive the technical direction of high-impact projects, designing and optimizing complex software solutions that power Pearson’s core platforms. You act as a subject-matter mentor, championing best practices, code quality, and the adoption of emerging technologies (including AI) to deliver resilient, scalable, and customer-focused systems. This is a purely individual contributor role with no direct reports.
Key Responsibilities
- Design and build robust solutions across new and existing software domains, applying best practices (SOLID, Clean Code, DDD, BDD) to ensure maintainability and scalability.
- Guide and coach team colleagues in technical matters, providing authoritative input during architecture and design decisions.
- Lead code reviews, promote knowledge sharing, and drive improvements in code quality, technical debt, and delivery metrics.
- Proactively adopt and promote AI tools and automation to improve team efficiency and problem-solving.
- Collaborate with product and QA teams to understand customer needs, balancing trade-offs and technical debt to deliver optimal solutions.
- Stay current with emerging technologies and industry trends, applying them to enhance the product landscape.
- Ensure comprehensive documentation and up-to-date collaboration artifacts (e.g., JIRA tickets, technical docs).
Required Skills and Competencies
- Deep expertise in the software development lifecycle, Agile methodologies, and AI tools for development, testing, and observability.
- Strong knowledge of Java, React, Kotlin, and object-oriented design principles.
- Proven experience with Java frameworks (Spring, Spring Boot), version control (Git), build tools (Maven, Gradle), and observability tools (e.g., New Relic).
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), microservices architecture, and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Familiarity with DevOps practices, CI/CD (especially GitHub), and database technologies (e.g., MongoDB).
- Excellent problem-solving, analytical, communication, and collaboration skills.
- Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
Qualifications (Education & Experience)
- 6+ years of relevant professional experience in software development, with a track record of increasing technical responsibility and accomplishments.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).