Manager, Software Engineer

If youre passionate about building a better future for individuals communities and our countryand youre committed to working hard to play your part in building that futureconsider 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:

Job Description

Software Engineering Manager

Job Profile Summary
The Software Engineering Manager provides technical leadershippeopleleadership 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

• Bachelors 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

How to Apply: If interested an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.

Additional Information

Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. Its not all-inclusive.

Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at

Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.