Manager, Software Engineering

About Ellucian

Ellucian powers innovation for higher education, partnering with approximately 3,000 customers across 50 countries, serving more than 21 million students. Ellucian's AI‑powered platform, trained on the richest dataset available in higher education, drives efficiency, personalized experiences, and strengthened engagement for all students, faculty and staff. Fueled by decades of experience with a singular focus on the unique needs of learning institutions, the Ellucian platform features best‑in‑class SaaS capabilities and delivers insights needed now and into the future.

These solutions and services span the entire student lifecycle, including data‑rich tools for student recruitment, enrollment, and retention to workforce analytics, fundraising, and alumni engagement. Ellucian's innovative solutions, vast ecosystem of partners and user community of more than 45,000 provides best practices leading to greater institutional success and achieving better student outcomes.

We are seeking a Software Engineering Manager to lead and actively contribute to building and maintaining innovative, world‑class SaaS solutions for higher education. This role combines people leadership with hands‑on technical guidance and requires operating effectively across both startup‑like, fast‑paced environments and large‑scale enterprise ecosystems - balancing speed, autonomy, and governance. You will bring a pragmatic, data‑driven approach to technical decision‑making, using metrics, observability, and AI‑assisted engineering practices to improve productivity, code quality, and delivery outcomes.

You will collaborate closely with Product Management to align team priorities with the product roadmap, ensuring sound lifecycle practices, minimizing technical debt, and delivering high‑quality incremental value. The position requires strong communication skills for effective collaboration with clients, partners, and internal teams in an agile environment.

• Technical Vision and Strategy:
  Establish API‑first development norms while driving alignment with evolving architectural standards through refactoring and modernization initiatives across diverse technology stacks.
• Innovation & AI Adoption:
  Champion adoption of AI‑assisted development tools and workflows to improve engineering velocity, automate repetitive tasks, and enhance code quality.
• Engineering Excellence:
  Promote rigorous engineering practices, including code reviews, static analysis, test automation, and continuous integration to ensure high‑quality, maintainable systems.
• Data‑Driven Decision Making:
  Drive technical decisions using metrics, observability, and system insights, embedding a data‑driven culture in architecture, performance, and prioritization.
• Collaboration:
  
  Lead small, high‑performing teams while operating effectively within enterprise structures, making pragmatic trade‑offs between speed, scalability, and governance.
• Ownership and Accountability:
  Manage project timelines and deliverables, ensuring timely and high‑quality delivery.
• Problem Solving:
  Provide technical solutions to complex functional and performance issues.
• Requirements Gathering:
  Lead software requirements gathering, design discussions, and code reviews.
• Mentorship:
  Mentor and guide engineers, providing technical peer feedback.
• Estimation:
  Perform detailed estimations for roadmap tasks and initiatives.
• Technical User Stories:
  Translate functional requirements into technical tasks.
• Support
  
  Collaboration:
  
  Collaborate with support teams to troubleshoot and resolve issues.
• Adaptability:
  Embrace change and lead the team to adopt new technologies and practices.
• System Analysis:
  Analyze system features, integration, security, scalability, and performance requirements.
• Technology Evaluation:
  Guide teams in working across and modernizing multiple tech stacks (e.g., Java, Groovy, Node.js), ensuring consistency with organizational standards.
• People Management:
  Manage performance, hiring, and career growth for engineers.

• Experience:
  
  Minimum of 10+ years of professional software development experience.
• Data‑Driven Mindset:
  Demonstrated…