Sr. Specialist/Lead Software Engineer

THE OPPORTUNITY

The Sr. Specialist/Lead role within the software engineering discipline is a leader of their agile team.  They partner with product owners to define requirements for our Education Products and define a technical approach that will meet all functional and non-functional requirements.  They also mentor the software engineers within their scrum teams, and are responsible for developing their engineering skills and helping them grow into more senior software engineering roles.   Those in this role should have deep expertise in one or more core software engineering areas, and broad knowledge on other software engineering skills related to their area as well as other key engineering functions including dev ops, quality engineering, performance engineering, security, and site reliability engineering.

Using all of these skills, the Sr. Specialist/Lead is responsible for ensuring their teams deliver quality software that meets customer needs.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Determines the best approach for software implementations and architecture and works with the team to develop them.

• Applies and coaches/advocates for common principles of good code development, including extensibility, reusability, maintainability, and testability through coaching/mentoring and code review.

• Takes the primary role of leading sizing/estimating and backlog grooming.

• Partners closely with the team’s Product Owner, designer, quality lead, and DevOps to manage within team capacity, manage tech debt, and mature/evolve effective team Agile product development practices.

• Works with the PO to develop shared team understanding of business context, value, and strategic importance of their work.

• Advocates for the team’s needs with engineering leadership.

• Plays a key role in resolving code/architecture related production incidents, partnering strongly with other team members.

About Scholastic

For more than 100 years, Scholastic Corporation (NASDAQ: SCHL) has been meeting children where they are – at school, at home and in their communities – by creating quality content and experiences, all beginning with literacy. Scholastic delivers stories, characters, and learning moments that empower all kids to become lifelong readers and learners through bestselling children’s books, literacy- and knowledge-building resources for schools including classroom magazines, and award-winning, entertaining children's media. As the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books through school-based book clubs and book fairs, classroom libraries, school and public libraries, retail, and online, and with a global reach into more than 135 countries, Scholastic encourages the personal and intellectual growth of all children, while nurturing a lifelong relationship with reading, themselves, and the world around them. Learn more at www.scholastic.com.

Some benefits that we offer:

• Full suite of health and wellness benefits (including a $0 deductible Medical Plan)

• Retirement Savings Plan 401(k) with options for both Roth and Traditional Contributions

• Tuition-Free programs for undergraduate and graduate degrees

• Generous Parental Leave Program

• Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) with opportunity for discounted stock at a 15% discount

Thank you for your consideration in choosing Scholastic.

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HOW YOU CAN FIT (Qualifications)

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

Required:

• Aptitude for troubleshooting and problem solving.

• Expertise in modern web application/services development, technical design and architecture.

• Practical experience in software engineering and application/service architecture.

• Strong sense of ownership and accountability with a commitment to delivering high quality software that balances technical and business goals.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with ability to communicate with a variety of audiences at all levels.

• Strong understanding of Agile product development and practices.

• Deep knowledge of modern backend(Java, Python) and frontend(React) development ecosystems, tooling, and best practices.

• Strong backend development experience using Java (Spring Boot) and/or Python, including building APIs, services, and data processing components.

• Leverage agentic AI tools for software development (Cline/Cursor/Kiro etc.)

• Experience with cloud infrastructure and services, Amazon Web Services preferred(Lambda, ECS/EKS, S3, API Gateway, RDS, DynamoDB, CloudFormation/Terraform)

Preferred:

• Strong understanding of service oriented architecture concepts

• Knowledge of Object Oriented Programming, Model View Controller paradigm

• Experience with relational or NoSQL data platforms like MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB.

• Knowledge of version control systems and workflow (e.g. Git)

• Experience building solutions that leverage generative AI capabilities

• Experience with GenAI agentic frameworks like Bedrock, LlamaIndex, Langchain etc.

• Understanding of HTML, CSS, and a web application framework such as Angular/React.

Experience and Education:

Experience: Prior experience in a mid-level engineering role, with responsibility for technical design and strong expertise with one or more technical areas.

Education: Bachelors or masters in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or similar field of study, or equivalent experience.

Scholastic is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Our policy is clear: there shall be no discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, pregnancy, national origin, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, or status as a disabled veteran or Vietnam veteran. Those factors shall not influence the determination of qualifications for a job or other opportunity within the company. Further, all personnel actions (such as compensation, tuition aid, benefits, transfers, promotions, and dismissals, company-sponsored training, social and recreational programs) shall be administered without discrimination.

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