Software Engineering Manager – Identity Platform (CIAM)
Location: Chennai (Hybrid - 3 days/week in Office)
Role Summary
We are looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to lead the delivery of our Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) platform. This role is responsible for leading cross-functional engineering teams comprising Software Development Engineers and Quality Engineers while driving predictable delivery, engineering excellence, platform reliability, and continuous improvement.
The ideal candidate combines strong technical leadership with delivery management expertise and has experience managing teams building secure, scalable enterprise platforms.
Key Responsibilities
Engineering Leadership
- Lead, coach, and develop cross-functional engineering teams including Software Development Engineers and Quality Engineers.
- Build a high-performing engineering culture focused on collaboration, accountability, quality, and continuous improvement.
- Drive career development, performance management, hiring, and succession planning.
- Identify opportunities to leverage Generative AI and AI-powered engineering tools across the software development lifecycle, including requirements analysis, code generation, test automation, code reviews, documentation, and incident analysis.
- Foster a culture of continuous experimentation and learning around AI-enabled engineering practices.
AI & Modern Engineering
- Experience leveraging Generative AI tools to improve software engineering productivity and delivery.
- Familiarity with AI-assisted software development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Copilot, Cursor, or similar developer productivity platforms.
- Understanding of Large Language Models (LLMs), prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and AI agent concepts.
- Experience integrating AI capabilities into enterprise applications using modern APIs and cloud AI services.
- Knowledge of Responsible AI principles, AI governance, security, and data privacy considerations.
Delivery Management
- Own end-to-end delivery of engineering initiatives from planning through production deployment.
- Partner closely with Product Management, Architecture, UX, Security, and Operations to deliver business outcomes.
- Manage sprint execution, release planning, dependencies, risks, and issue resolution.
- Drive predictable delivery through effective planning, estimation, and execution.
- Monitor delivery health using engineering and delivery metrics.
Technical Leadership
- Provide technical direction for CIAM solutions built using modern identity platforms such as ForgeRock and Auth0.
- Guide engineering teams in adopting AI-powered development tools, solution design and architecture decisions to ensure scalability, availability, maintainability, and security.
- Review technical approaches and ensure engineering best practices are followed.
- Mentor engineers on secure software development, cloud-native architecture, API design, and engineering standards.
- Encourage data-driven engineering decisions using engineering metrics, AI insights, and platform observability.
Quality & Engineering Excellence
- Build quality into the software development lifecycle rather than treating QA as a separate phase.
- Lead Quality Engineering practices including:
- Test automation
- Shift-left testing
- Performance testing
- Regression automation
- Release readiness
- Improve engineering productivity through automation and DevOps practices.
- Drive improvements in code quality, technical debt reduction, observability, and platform reliability.
CIAM Platform Ownership
- Lead the development and evolution of Customer Identity solutions including:
- Authentication
- Authorization
- Single Sign-On
- Federation
- MFA
- Passwordless authentication
- Identity Lifecycle Management
- Ensure compliance with security and privacy standards including GDPR and CCPA.
- Collaborate with Security teams to improve platform resilience and risk management.
Stakeholder Management
- Build strong partnerships with Product, Architecture, Security, Platform Engineering, and Business stakeholders.
- Communicate engineering progress, risks, dependencies, and delivery commitments.
- Provide regular reporting using engineering KPIs and operational metrics.
Continuous Improvement
- Drive adoption of Agile, DevSecOps, CI/CD, and engineering best practices.
- Identify opportunities to improve engineering processes, developer experience, automation, and operational excellence.
- Champion innovation and continuous learning across the team.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field with 12+ years of experience.
- Previous software engineering experience with proven success managing engineering teams.
- Experience leading both Software Development and Quality Engineering teams.
- Strong experience delivering enterprise applications in Agile environments.
- Experience with Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) and Identity & Access Management (IAM) platforms.
- Excellent stakeholder management, leadership, and communication skills.
- Experience managing multiple priorities in a fast-paced engineering organization.
Technical Skills
Identity & Security
- ForgeRock (AM, IDM, DS, IG) or Auth0
- OAuth 2.0
- OpenID Connect (OIDC)
- SAML
- MFA
- Passwordless Authentication
- Identity Federation
- Identity Governance concepts
Software Engineering
- Java
- Spring Boot
- REST APIs
- Microservices Architecture
- Distributed Systems
Cloud & DevOps
- AWS
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- Jenkins / GitLab CI
- CI/CD pipelines
- Infrastructure Automation
Quality Engineering
- Test Automation
- API Testing
- Performance Testing
- Quality Engineering Practices
- Shift-left Testing
- Release Management
Who we are:
At Pearson, our purpose is simple: to help people realize the life they imagine through learning. We believe that every learning opportunity is a chance for a personal breakthrough. We are the world's lifelong learning company. For us, learning isn't just what we do. It's who we are. To learn more: We are Pearson.
Pearson is an Equal Opportunity Employer and a member of E-Verify. Employment decisions are based on qualifications, merit and business need. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status or any other group protected by law. We actively seek qualified candidates who are protected veterans and individuals with disabilities as defined under VEVRAA and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.
If you are an individual with a disability and are unable or limited in your ability to use or access our career site as a result of your disability, you may request reasonable accommodations by emailing [Confidential Information].
Job: Engineering
Job Family: TECHNOLOGY
Organization: OCTO
Schedule: FULL_TIME
Workplace Type: Hybrid
Req ID: 25086
