Head of Software Engineering

Overview

In this role you lead strategy, delivery and operation of technology across Pearson Qualifications, spanning General and Vocational Qualifications and a major government contract. You will manage globally distributed software engineering, DevOps, quality engineering, and operations while aligning resources with product and regulatory priorities. You’ll modernise legacy and cloud-based services, strengthen resilience and data integrity, and steward executive-level stakeholder engagement. This is a strategic, impact-driven leadership role shaping critical, time-sensitive qualification services.

Responsibilities

• Own technology strategy, roadmap and delivery outcomes across multiple portfolios
• Align technology investment with priorities, roadmaps and contractual commitments
• Ensure secure, accurate, reliable live service delivery across the operational lifecycle
• Lead globally distributed software engineering, DevOps, quality engineering, and operations teams
• Translate goals into executable plans with clear accountability
• Lead delivery for high-stakes government services with regulatory and contractual milestones
• Act as senior technology liaison to clients and regulators, providing credible assurance
• Own production readiness, capacity planning, incident management, business continuity and disaster recovery
• Champion modern engineering practices (Agile, DevSecOps, automation, observability, APIs) and secure-by-design architecture
• Guide legacy modernization and cloud transitions while preserving live service and data integrity
• Reduce technical debt and manage engineering governance and investment
• Oversee handovers to support teams for new capabilities
• Manage supplier relationships, performance, and value-for-money
• Provide executive reporting on delivery, service health, budget, risks and dependencies
• Ensure compliance with policies, regulatory, security, privacy, accessibility, audit and quality requirements
• Foster an inclusive, capable engineering organisation with leadership development and succession planning
• Contribute to business cases, planning and Pearson’s longer-term technology strategy
• Escalate risks early and provide timely, credible information for decision-making

Key requirements

• Proven experience leading large-scale software engineering, DevOps and technology service organisations at senior director or equivalent level
• Experience managing globally distributed, matrix or partner-led teams
• Accountability for complex digital products or services operating at scale
• Experience with mission-critical, business- or revenue-critical technology services
• Strong operational leadership across production readiness, resilience, capacity, incidents, DR and business continuity
• Track record of improving reliability, security, performance and supportability of critical services
• Experience in regulated or contractually controlled environments
• Ability to deliver against demanding milestones and service levels
• Experience with assurance, audit evidence, risk mitigation, technology controls and contractual commitments
• Excellent executive communication and stakeholder-management skills
• Deep understanding of modern software engineering, cloud, DevSecOps, APIs, security, observability, quality engineering and application operations
• Experience modernising legacy estates while maintaining live service and data integrity
• Ability to translate business and product priorities into credible engineering roadmaps and investments
• Experience leading recovery or major service-improvement initiatives
• Experience building engineering capability, leadership development and succession planning
• Strong supplier and commercial management experience
• Experience managing significant capital and operating budgets
• Ability to simplify complexity, set priorities and provide transparent delivery assurance
• Knowledge of AI, automation or agentic development in secure enterprise environments (desirable)

• leadership presence
• strategic thinking
• collaboration
• software engineering
• DevOps
• cloud technologies

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