Cloud Platform Engineering Manager
San Francisco, CA

Job Description

Cloud Platform Engineering Manager

Description

At Pearson, we're committed to a world that's always learning and to our talented team who makes it all possible. From bringing lectures vividly to life to turning textbooks into laptop lessons, we are always re-examining the way people learn best, whether it's one child in our own backyard or an education community across the globe. We are bold thinkers and standout innovators who motivate each other to explore new frontiers in an environment that supports and inspires us to always be better. By pushing the boundaries of technology - and each other to surpass these boundaries - we create seeds of learning that become the catalyst for the world's innovations, personal and global, large and small.

Learner at the Heart

Pearson is a global education company that helps people around the world to make progress in their lives through learning. With a rich heritage that combines 170 years of experience in publishing with the latest learning technology and digital services, we help people to learn whatever, wherever and however they choose.

We are now transforming Pearson to accelerate our activity in digital learning, education services and emerging markets. This will enable us to make a lasting impact in helping to solve some of the most important challenges in global education

Why We Need You

We believe education is a vital force that can empower people, help them to reach their potential and contribute to more connected communities, all around the world.

Our strength comes from our outstanding people; our strong relationships in the education world; our expertise in using technology to help people learn; our global footprint and local reach; and our position as a profitable, global company with a unifying sense of purpose.

We're investing in our technology and infrastructure. By working at Pearson, you have a unique chance to make a real difference to the lives of people all over the world.

Across the world we believe strength and success comes from diversity in our people - all qualified applicants are encouraged to apply. In the US, Pearson is an Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/V/D, and a member of E-Verify.

About Technology

Our Technology team provides the essential digital infrastructure that underpins Pearson's global portfolio of products and platforms. We have open and collaborative teams in place working to build efficient global platforms and scaling digital products to reach hundreds of millions of learners around the world, while delivering elastic, secure, data-driven services. The Technology team also drives and coordinates how we work with technology partners to establish Pearson as a destination for innovation in education. Our aim is to ensure that our customers have access to more products and learning solutions in more regions while continually offering a high-quality user experience.

About Technology Operations

Technology Operations oversees the design, build and operation of the infrastructure that underpins and runs all technology within Pearson. The team also ensures Pearson's core services perform at a world-class level for both customers and the business, and that our employees have access to the technology support services they need to carry out their work every day.

About The Job

The Manager Cloud Platform Engineering & Operations is responsible for leading one or more teams on projects of moderate to large size and complexity. This position requires having a strong technical background, organizational aptitude, and solid communication skills. The candidate will have demonstrable experience of how to lead, engage and organise talented engineers. We're looking for a person who is results oriented with a passion for enabling innovation and creativity. The role will be managing groups of engineers across the following areas:

Cloud Platforms

Pearson has in-house Cloud Platforms that abstract public IaaS. They are built for containerised applications and encourages our developers to pursue micro-service architectures. Built on largely open source technology such as Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform and leveraging multiple cloud platforms both public and private to deliver a ubiquitous and consistent global platform for continuously deploying applications.

Scope

You will manage global teams that will drive best practice in the Cloud, Containers and Automation arenas, we work in a lean agile fashion with fortnightly sprints under the direction of Product Managers who set the roadmap and content in the backlog. As the engineering leader, your primary objective will be to develop standards, discipline and process that allows our engineers to be portable across any of our current initiatives. Your success is measured by creating a team of engineers who deliver predictable and consistent output with a high level of engagement due to their continued ability to be creative and flexible with how they problem solve.

Duties

Drive DevOps working practices and implement SRE principles to drive operational stability of the entire platform

Drive enhancements of our Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) capability to increase throughput and reduce manual effort

Enable a distributed team of engineers to build world class platforms for Pearson development teams

Manage and participate in the day-to-day management activities for your team of permanent and temporary resources

Foster innovation, creativity, and teamwork amongst a cross-functional, multi-project, multi-discipline team

Facilitate mechanisms whereby engineers share their specialisms with the rest of the team and prevent "hot spots" of expertise by building a culture of sharing

Remove "blockers" that disrupt our progress so the engineers can focus their time on building the platforms

Ensure a safe and trustworthy working environment free of bias, discrimination or prejudice where all ideas are welcome, without fear of blame/judgement

Define and collect metrics and KPIs to measure team and individual performance and drive improvement initiatives

Contribute to Technology programmes and initiatives as directed by leadership

Qualifications

About You

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science / MS or equivalent experience required

Five years experience leading engineering or other technically oriented teams

Experience launching technical products and operating them in an SRE mode

Proven track record of engaging and developing technical talent

Exceptional communication skills both written and verbal

Self-motivated and the ability to work independently to achieve the strategic architectural vision of the Technology organisation

Naturally curious and inquisitive outlook, you are excited by change and the opportunities it brings to you and your team

Demonstrable experience building high-performance teams that work with advanced technologies

Deep understanding of agile processes and experience of implementing and optimizing them in development teams

Understanding of Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment and how to effectively manage automated environments.

Things We Expect You to Know:

* Extensive engineering experience with Linux operating systems


* In-depth, hands on experience of at least two major clouds (AWS, Google, Azure etc…)


* Understanding of GitOps


* A deep understanding of distributed system design and dependency management


* A strong grasp of monitoring tools, approach and implementation


* Able to show examples of previous work exploiting containerized services


* Solid working experience of continuous integration practices & tools (Jenkins, Travis CI, GitLab, etc…)


* An established history of leading agile teams


* How to lead a globally distributed team of engineers



Our Tools of the Trade

We work at the moment with the following tools, we understand everyone will do a bit of learning on the job, but you will need to be able to meaningfully contribute to a selection of these tools:

Required:

* AWS


* Git


* Docker


* Kubernetes


* Terraform


* Ansible


* NGINX


* Calico



Must have solid experience with at least 1 of the languages below:

* Go


* Java


* Python



Good to have:

* Jenkins/GitLab


* Vault


* Consul


* Prometheus


* Understanding of networks


* Testing and quality engineering


* System metrics gathering for improvements

Some domestic and international travel may be required (<10%), candidate must hold a valid passport and be able to travel internationally.

#LI-POST



Pearson is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer and a member of E-Verify. All qualified applicants, including minorities, women, protected veterans, and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

Primary Location: US-CA-San Francisco

Other Locations US-CA-San Jose

Work Locations: US-CA-San Francisco-50 California 50 California Street San Francisco 94111

Job: Technology

Organization: Technology & Operations

Employee Status: Regular Employee

Job Type: Standard

Shift: Day Job

Job Posting: May 15, 2019

Job Unposting: Ongoing

Schedule: Full-time Regular

Req ID: 1906452

Pearson is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer and a member of E-Verify. All qualified applicants, including minorities, women, protected veterans, and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply.