Lead Specialist, Technical Architect at Pearson

Job description

Lead Specialist, Technical Architect (Quality) - ExamDeveloper About ExamDeveloper ExamDeveloper is a web-based exam development platform that allows customers to write, review, and manage questions on their exams. Customers rely on ExamDeveloper to support the full workflow around item writing, collaborative review, scoring, and test management. ExamDeveloper is feature-rich and used by clients in a variety of ways, which creates a high volume of testing, automation, and release-readiness decisions. The product is supported by multiple Agile software development teams and a large distributed quality engineering community, including many QA engineers based in India. Clear asynchronous communication and consistent quality standards are essential to the role. As a Quality Engineer Architect aligned to the E30 expert track, you provide domain-level quality leadership for ExamDeveloper. This role is unique within the ExamDeveloper quality organization and is not intended to define a standard Lead progression step. This is not a people manager role, but it does provide technical direction, standards, coaching, artifact review, and quality-process leadership across multiple Agile teams and a large distributed QA organization. You are the subject-matter expert on the domain, on automation approaches, and on the scenarios that matter most to customers — and you think like an end customer of the product. You are relied upon when quality challenges are highly complex, ambiguous, cross-system, or business-critical, and when decisions require strong judgment across test strategy, automation architecture, reliability, and release confidence. You lead through expertise, not formal authority — shaping the quality system, mentoring senior engineers, reviewing critical QA work, and spending selective hands-on time in testing or automation investigation where your expertise has the greatest impact. Key responsibilities Quality strategy and direction • Set strategic direction for the ExamDeveloper quality system, including process, automation, tooling, training, metrics, quality gates, and release confidence across the domain. • Partner with the Product Architect and Engineering leadership to determine long-term automation and quality strategy. • Continually evaluate the process, tools, technology, data, and people practices involved in QA work, then drive improvements that make testing more automated, efficient, sustainable, and aligned to business risk. • Establish quality metrics that inform decision-making, including automation health, test reliability, defect leakage, cycle time, release readiness, and the effectiveness of QA investments. Subject-matter expertise • Serve as the domain subject-matter expert on quality, automation approaches, and critical test scenarios. • Drive development and maintenance of robust, thorough test coverage across the domain's application areas. • Serve as expert for complex root-cause analysis, intermittent-defect investigation, and reliability challenges. • Keep current on industry best practices in automation, tooling, and approach, and assess their potential to improve the domain. Capability and influence • Mentor and coach senior quality engineers and build quality capability across teams. • Serve as the go-to expert for teams building out automated test suites and quality practices. • Support Engineering leadership in developing high-performing quality talent across the domain. • Evaluate emerging tools and AI-assisted testing practices that improve quality, efficiency, and delivery confidence. • Provide technical oversight of QA practices and test artifacts, reviewing work for maintainability, effectiveness, and alignment to quality standards. • Represent quality in leadership discussions and with internal or external stakeholders when issues require domain-level judgment and clear communication. Required education and experience • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience. • 8+ years of professional quality engineering, software testing, or test automation experience. • 3+ years operating as a domain-level quality expert or SME across complex, distributed platforms. • Demonstrated influence on quality practices, automation frameworks, or standards adopted across multiple teams. • Deep experience with test automation strategy, tooling, and quality improvement. • Experience operating in large product environments with multiple Agile teams, distributed QA teams, and high volumes of testing and release-readiness decisions. Desired knowledge, skills, and abilities • Recognized expertise in automation architecture, quality strategy, reliability, and test tooling. • Proficiency with scripting and object-oriented programming languages. • Experience with Gauge, Selenium/WebDriver, C#, VM-based test execution, or cloud testing infrastructure is relevant to the ExamDeveloper environment. • Strong grounding in Agile delivery, cloud-native environments (Azure/Kubernetes), and CI/CD quality gates. • Experience with SQL, telemetry, dashboards, observability, and production quality signals. • Familiarity with LLMs / ML and experience building or evaluating AI-assisted QA tooling, preferred. • Experience supporting accessibility compliance and WCAG standards, preferred. • Excellent communication and the ability to influence senior stakeholders without formal authority. • Strong written communication skills, including the ability to guide distributed teams through clear asynchronous communication. Success measures • Quality recommendations influence significant architecture, platform, delivery, or investment decisions. • Domain quality practices, frameworks, and tooling improve and are adopted across teams. • Complex systems demonstrate improved reliability, reduced defect leakage, and stronger release confidence. • Systemic and cross-system quality risks are identified early enough to shape planning. • Senior engineers and teams improve through mentorship, coaching, and quality guidance. • Stakeholders seek out this role for the most complex or unclear quality problems. Leadership behaviors Customer Centricity Connects quality decisions to customer outcomes by shaping strategies that reflect authentic user journeys and prevent user-impacting failures at scale. Raise the Performance Bar Raises quality standards across teams by improving test architecture, automation frameworks, practices, and tooling. Exceptional Collaboration for Value Creates alignment across engineering, product, architecture, and operations when quality choices involve competing priorities. Our Leaders Inspire Leads through expertise, judgment, and coaching; fosters clarity and knowledge exchange during periods of high change without relying on formal authority. Location & Working Pattern United States. Remote within the United States. Any state restrictions or travel expectations will be shared during the recruitment process. Compensation Compensation at Pearson is influenced by factors including skill set, experience, and location. The full-time salary range for this role is $150,000 - $160,000. This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program, and information on benefits offered is here. Applications will be accepted through November 9th, 2026. This window may be extended depending on business needs. Why Join Pearson? This is an opportunity to influence the technical direction of a high-impact assessment platform used for secure remote testing. You will work across teams, help modernize a complex technology estate, and establish architecture that improves scalability, resilience and delivery quality.

Requirements

Must-haves

Lead Specialist, Technical Architect (Quality) - ExamDeveloper
Quality strategy and direction
Set strategic direction for the ExamDeveloper quality system, including process, automation, tooling, training, metrics, quality gates, and release confidence across the domain.
Partner with the Product Architect and Engineering leadership to determine long-term automation and quality strategy.
Continually evaluate the process, tools, technology, data, and people practices involved in QA work, then drive improvements that make testing more automated, efficient, sustainable, and aligned to business risk.
Establish quality metrics that inform decision-making, including automation health, test reliability, defect leakage, cycle time, release readiness, and the effectiveness of QA investments.
Subject-matter expertise
Serve as the domain subject-matter expert on quality, automation approaches, and critical test scenarios.
Drive development and maintenance of robust, thorough test coverage across the domain's application areas.
Serve as expert for complex root-cause analysis, intermittent-defect investigation, and reliability challenges.
Keep current on industry best practices in automation, tooling, and approach, and assess their potential to improve the domain.
Capability and influence
Mentor and coach senior quality engineers and build quality capability across teams.
Serve as the go-to expert for teams building out automated test suites and quality practices.
Support Engineering leadership in developing high-performing quality talent across the domain.
Evaluate emerging tools and AI-assisted testing practices that improve quality, efficiency, and delivery confidence.
Provide technical oversight of QA practices and test artifacts, reviewing work for maintainability, effectiveness, and alignment to quality standards.
Represent quality in leadership discussions and with internal or external stakeholders when issues require domain-level judgment and clear communication.
Required education and experience
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience.
8+ years of professional quality engineering, software testing, or test automation experience.
3+ years operating as a domain-level quality expert or SME across complex, distributed platforms.

Nice-to-haves

Familiarity with LLMs / ML and experience building or evaluating AI-assisted QA tooling, preferred.
Experience supporting accessibility compliance and WCAG standards, preferred.

Application prep

Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.

Keywords to mirror

agilegoaiazurekubernetesci/cdsqlmlaccessibility

Platform: oracle-cloud
Effort: medium