Manager, Software Engineering (Innovation Engineering)

Overview

As Manager, Software Engineering (Innovation Engineering) at Pearson Labs, you lead a small, globally distributed team of Innovation Engineers steering a live portfolio of experiments. You drive day-to-day operations, coach engineers, and ensure demo-ready prototypes backed by evidence. You balance ambiguity with rigor, set standards for prototyping and experimentation, and guide hypothesis-driven work. This role lets you influence AI, agentic workflows, and immersive tech while collaborating with senior stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day operation of the Labs engineering team and allocate work across a changing research portfolio
• Coach and develop engineers through regular feedback, growth conversations, onboarding and AI-native ways of working
• Create focus across concurrent experiments, remove blockers and bring engineers together on shared initiatives
• Establish practical standards for prototyping, documentation, experimentation, evidence quality and demo readiness
• Help teams frame hypotheses, define measurable objectives and reach explicit scale, pivot or stop decisions
• Maintain an accurate view of portfolio health and communicate progress, risks and recommendations clearly
• Coordinate customer sessions, showcases and executive demonstrations so the story travels as well as the work
• Stay alert to emerging technology, changing business priorities and opportunities for Pearson Labs to explore next

Key requirements

• Experience leading software engineers day to day, with evidence of building a high-performing and genuinely positive team culture
• Strong engineering background and the technical credibility to review prototypes, challenge architecture and work alongside engineers when useful
• Comfort leading work designed to create learning quickly, including experiments that may be stopped or discarded
• Strong prioritisation and organisation across multiple concurrent initiatives with changing maturity
• Practical, early and constructive approach to feedback, coaching and team development
• Confidence engaging customers, clients and senior stakeholders and presenting technical work in an accessible way
• Entrepreneurial mindset, with curiosity about technology, learning and the wider business
• Fluency with AI-augmented engineering, coding agents or agentic workflows, or strong readiness to work this way
• Experience leading distributed or international colleagues and creating cohesion across locations
• Interest in education, learning science, EdTech, applied research, startups or innovation environments is helpful

• leadership of teams
• coaching and feedback
• stakeholder communication
• AI-augmented engineering
• coding agents or agentic workflows
• prototype review and architecture critique

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