Manager, Software Engineer

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career. Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families. The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs. At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is: Grade: Management Technical 714 Pay Range: $151,800.00 - $250,500.00 Job Description Job Profile Summary: The Software Engineering Manager will provide technical leadership, vision, direction, and mentoring for the software engineering team. This individual will manage a team of personnel who design, develop, and support applications to meet business requirements. The Software Engineering Manager will deliver product and feature roadmaps and provide overall leadership and day to day management for a team of software development professionals. Additionally, they will provide resource planning and project scheduling using Agile/Scrum software development methodologies.   Software Engineering Manager  Job Profile Summary   The Software Engineering Manager provides technical leadership, people leadership, and operational excellence for a team of software engineers supporting the WGU Academy ecosystem. This leader partners closely with Product Management, Architecture, Salesforce, Enterprise Technology, and other cross-functional teams to deliver secure, scalable, cloud-native solutions that enhance the learner experience. The role champions Agile delivery, modern software architecture, DevSecOps, event-driven design, and practical adoption of AI to improve engineering productivity and business outcomes.  Essential Functions and Responsibilities  Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing software engineering team.  Partner with Product, Architecture, Salesforce, and Enterprise Technology to deliver business outcomes.  Drive delivery of roadmaps while ensuring quality, security, and reliability.  Oversee the full software development lifecycle from planning through production support.  Establish engineering best practices including code reviews, CI/CD, automated testing, and documentation.  Ensure operational excellence through observability, incident management, and continuous improvement.  Participate in Major Incident calls by mentoring engineers, coordinating technical response efforts, and helping the team restore service quickly and effectively.  Lead modernization efforts using cloud-native architectures, AWS, Kubernetes/EKS, and event-driven architectures.  Drive adoption of AI-assisted software development and leverage AI to optimize engineering workflows, automate repetitive processes, improve operational efficiency, accelerate software delivery, and enhance decision making.  Encourage engineers to responsibly build internal AI tools and automations that improve developer experience and business processes.  Recruit, mentor, and develop engineering talent.  Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities  Experience leading Agile engineering teams.  Strong background developing backend services with Python.  AWS, Kubernetes/EKS, PostgreSQL, GitHub, GitHub Actions, Jira.  Experience with REST APIs, Kafka, Apache Pulsar, and Event-Driven Architecture.  Understanding of enterprise integration patterns, DevOps, observability, and CI/CD.  Experience partnering with Salesforce teams.  Experience evaluating, implementing, and governing AI technologies to improve engineering productivity and operational workflows.  Ability to identify opportunities where AI can streamline software development, testing, documentation, support, and internal business operations.  Minimum Qualifications  Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.  7+ years software engineering experience.  3+ years leading engineering teams.  Experience building cloud-native applications using Python.  Experience with AWS and modern engineering practices.  Preferred Qualifications  AWS, EKS, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Apache Pulsar.  Event-Driven Architecture (EDA).  Microservices and distributed systems.  Salesforce integrations.  Infrastructure as Code.  Higher Education or EdTech experience.  Experience creating AI-powered tools, automations, and engineering workflows using modern LLM technologies while applying appropriate governance and security practices.  Position & Application Details Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrua