Director, Software Engineering (Des Moines)

Director of Software Engineering – Cengage

We believe in the power and joy of learning. At Cengage, we help students around the world discover the power of learning. As a Director of Software Engineering, you will lead innovative products and shape AI-driven engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Work with multiple leaders, including the Digital leadership team and business partners, to craft a convincing technical strategy and roadmap(s) to achieve business unit goals.
• Collaborate across functions to align on priorities for scaling and building our products globally.
• Identify scalable products and deliver them to support our global customer base, incorporating new technologies and industry trends.
• Partner with multi-functional leaders, through POM, to standardize and improve development, testing, and release processes, ensuring timely delivery of quality products.
• Drive product and technology strategy reviews with Product Leaders and senior collaborators, leading strategic technological discussions.
• Lead high-performing engineering teams, developing a pipeline of high-caliber talent and encouraging leaders to achieve priorities.
• Cultivate a high-performance, transparent environment passionate about accountability and results.
• Reinvent and optimize the SDLC using modern frameworks, principles, automation, and generative AI.
• Champion a culture of continuous learning and professional development, offering team members opportunities to grow.

Skills you will need

• 5+ years of leadership experience in developing technology strategies and driving innovation.
• 10+ years of progressive software development experience.
• Experience leading a global workforce of employees and contractors across different time zones.
• Expertise in AWS (EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS, CloudFormation), cloud-native development (Kubernetes, Docker, microservices), and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, AWS CDK).
• Solid understanding of AI concepts, technologies and methods, including machine learning, language, reasoning & multimodal models, prompt & context engineering, developing and using skills & agent frameworks, RAG, and vector databases.
• Hands‑on experience integrating or experimenting with commercial and open‑source GenAI technologies and toolkits (e.g., coding assistants, OpenAI, Hugging Face, LangChain).
• Strong experience in modernizing monolithic architectures, implementing hybrid cloud strategies, and crafting APIs to bridge legacy systems with cloud‑native platforms.
• Proven ability to compose and build scalable, secure, high‑availability enterprise systems using CI/CD pipelines and automated testing frameworks.
• Skilled in agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe) and customer‑centric product models to drive iterative development and rapid time‑to‑market.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Preferred

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field, or equivalent combination of education and recent, relevant work experience.

Compensation

Base salary range: $138,200.00 – $180,000.00 USD. You will also be eligible for the company’s discretionary incentive bonus program, with a target of 25% of base salary. Note that the bonus is not guaranteed and is dependent on performance.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Cengage is committed to working with broad talent pools to attract and hire strong and the most qualified individuals. Our job applicants are considered regardless of any classification protected by applicable federal, state, provincial or local laws.

Accommodations

Cengage is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities during our application process. If you are an applicant with a disability and require reasonable accommodation, please contact us at View email address on apply.placed-app.com.