Senior Software Engineer

Senior Software Engineer – Platform & Modernization
English Language Learning (ELL) – Assessments Technology

Department: English Language Learning (ELL)
Job family: Software Engineering
Contract: Full‑time (FTE)
Location: Hybrid / Full Remote (Spain or Poland)

About Pearson and ELL
Pearson is the world’s leading learning company, committed to helping people realise the life they imagine through learning. Within Pearson, the English Language Learning (ELL) organisation builds platforms and products that support language learning and language proficiency assessment at global scale.

This role sits within ELL Technology, in teams responsible for secure, reliable, and scalable assessment systems, where engineering quality, operational stability, and long‑term sustainability are critical.

Role summary
We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help modernize and strengthen core assessment technology within ELL. This role is designed for an engineer who is comfortable working across legacy and modern systems, raising engineering maturity, and enabling multiple teams through shared platform improvements.

This is not a single‑team, feature‑only role. You will have a home squad, while also contributing to cross‑team enablement, modernization initiatives, and engineering best practices that scale across ELL.

What you will do
Modernization of critical backend services
Design, implement, and evolve Java / Spring‑based services, including refactoring and modernization of legacy systems.

Reduce long‑term technical risk by improving maintainability, modularity, and clarity of ownership.

Apply incremental modernization techniques that allow teams to continue delivering while architecture evolves.

Platform and cross‑team enablement
Contribute to shared platform capabilities used by multiple ELL squads (e.g. release safety patterns, feature‑flagging approaches, service integration standards).

Act as a technical partner for teams adopting new responsibilities or inheriting complex systems.

Help make platform improvements visible, measurable, and repeatable across teams.

Quality and testing maturity
Treat unit testing as a first‑class responsibility, ensuring new and changed code is well covered and reliable.

Improve testing practices across the test pyramid (unit, integration, contract), collaborating with QA/QE and SRE partners where needed.

Support teams in building sustainable quality habits that improve release confidence and reduce incidents.

Trunk‑based delivery and engineering discipline
Work in a trunk‑based development model, with short‑lived branches, frequent integration, and a main branch that is always releasable.

Use feature flags and automated tests to enable safe, continuous delivery.

Contribute to code reviews and CI pipelines that protect trunk stability and quality.

AI‑assisted engineering
Use Pearson‑approved AI development tools (e.g. GitHub Copilot Business and, where approved and funded, Cursor‑style IDEs) to improve productivity, code comprehension, refactoring, and test creation.

Apply strong engineering judgment: review AI‑generated output critically, add appropriate tests, and ensure security and quality standards are met.

Act as a role model for responsible AI usage in software development.

Operational excellence
Contribute to systems with real customers and real reliability expectations.

Support sustainable operations by addressing root causes, not just symptoms.

Collaborate effectively with product, QA, and SRE stakeholders in an environment with defined operational processes and SLAs.

What we’re looking for
Must‑have
Strong backend engineering experience, including Java and Spring (or equivalent Java frameworks).

Solid software engineering fundamentals: API design, clean code, CI/CD awareness, observability basics.

Comfortable with modern “vibe coding” practices — collaborating with AI coding assistants

Trunk‑based development experience or mindset: short‑lived branches, continuous integration, trunk always in a releasable state.

Strong unit‑testing discipline: writing deterministic unit tests, integrating them into CI pipelines, and treating unit tests as part of “done”.

Ability to collaborate across teams and influence technical direction pragmatically.

Strongly preferred
Proven experience modernizing, refactoring, or stabilizing legacy systems.

Experience implementing or operating feature flag solutions to support safe delivery.

Experience improving automation testing strategy beyond a single codebase (patterns, standards, enablement).

Familiarity with cloud‑hosted, distributed systems and reliability concerns.

Experience mentoring engineers and improving team‑level engineering practices.

Front‑end development experience (e.g. React/Angular applications).

Ways of working / mindset
Comfortable operating in ambiguity and evolving architectures.

Outcome‑driven: balances ideal solutions with real‑world constraints.

Quality‑focused without being dogmatic.

Communicates trade‑offs clearly and constructively.

What success looks like
Within 6–12 months, you will:

Help transform a legacy service area into something easier and safer to change.

Enable teams to work confidently in a trunk‑based delivery model with strong automated testing.

Improve release safety through feature flags, better test coverage, and pragmatic platform improvements.

Reduce dependency bottlenecks by raising shared engineering maturity across squads.

Why join Pearson ELL
Work on global, mission‑critical assessment technology where reliability, security, and scale truly matter.

High autonomy and visibility: your work will influence multiple teams and long‑term platform direction.

Strong collaboration culture across Engineering, QA/QE, Product, and SRE.

Opportunity to apply modern engineering practices — including responsible AI‑assisted development — in a large, real‑world environment.