Technology Lead, Engineering

at Cengage Group in Kansas City, Missouri, United States

We believe in the power and joy of learning.

At Cengage, our employees have a direct impact in helping students around the world discover the power and joy of learning. We are bonded by our shared purpose – driving innovation that helps millions of learners improve their lives and achieve their dreams through education.

Cengage’s portfolio of businesses supports student choice by providing a range of pathways that help learners achieve their goals and lead a choice‑filled life.

In your role as Technology Lead, Experience Engineering within our Digital organization, you are responsible for delivering customer‑facing marketing website and ecommerce experiences. Specifically, you will lead our Experience Engineering team, focused on building and optimizing digital experiences that drive engagement and conversion. As a technology leader, you will build and lead a lean, high‑performing team using agile principles to design and deliver scalable, high‑quality solutions.

With a strong customer‑centric perspective, you will focus on delivering measurable improvements in user engagement, performance, and business outcomes. You will also play a key role in advancing how AI is applied within engineering workflows, helping the team operate more efficiently and effectively.

As the Technology Lead, you will divide your time between team leadership and hands‑on development, leading engineers while contributing directly to delivery. You will partner closely with Marketing, Design, Platform Engineering, and Dev Ops, using data and insights to guide decisions and continuously improve the customer experience. You will collaborate with other technology leads to provide technical direction and alignment across teams, and must be comfortable adapting your leadership style to the situation, leading when needed and contributing as an individual engineer when appropriate.

• Embrace agile methodologies and a customer‑centric digital experience model to drive iterative development and rapid time‑to‑market
• Lead delivery of customer‑facing features across web and ecommerce
• Define, prioritize, and communicate work clearly across Marketing, Design, and Engineering stakeholders
• Design and build scalable frontend solutions, including component systems
• Contribute directly to critical development work
• Engage stakeholders to understand needs and guide solution decisions
• Collaborate with Platform Engineering on CMS, commerce, and API integrations
• Monitor performance, analyze metrics, and use experimentation to drive continuous improvement in conversion and engagement
• Ensure reliable, high‑performing experiences through strong testing and quality practices
• Drive consistency through reusable components and shared standards
• Stay current with modern frontend and AI‑assisted development practices
• Apply AI‑assisted development practices to improve team efficiency and delivery quality
• Build a focused, accountable, high‑performing team culture

• Bachelor degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent combination of education and recent relevant work experience required
• 5+ years in a technical leadership or team lead role, including developing technology strategies and driving innovation
• Strong experience with modern frontend frameworks (React, Next.js or similar)
• Experience building component libraries or design systems
• Understanding of web performance, accessibility, and SEO
• Experience integrating with CMS, ecommerce platforms, and APIs
• Experience working in agile teams
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills

• Experience in ecommerce or high‑traffic consumer websites
• Familiarity with headless CMS and composable architectures
• Experience with experimentation or personalization
• Experience using AI‑assisted development tools

• Fast, predictable delivery of features
• Improved conversion and engagement
• Strong site performance and reliability
• Reusable components used across experiences
• Low defect rates and minimal rework
• Balance speed and quality, avoid over‑engineering
• Prioritize effectively in a lean team
• Work…