Senior Manager, Software Engineering - Communications & Quality

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

Grade: Management Technical 714 Pay Range: $174,700.00 - $288,200.00

Job Description

WGU is seeking a Senior Manager, Software Engineering - Communications & Quality to lead engineering teams responsible for critical communications, notification, customer engagement, and quality platforms serving WGU's students and business operations.

This leader will provide technical vision, architectural direction, and people leadership across highly scalable systems supporting SMS, email, push notifications, omnichannel communications, telephony, conversational AI, and agentic experiences. The role will help shape the engineering strategy for platforms that must operate securely, reliably, and at scale in a 24x7 environment.

The ideal candidate combines strong software engineering fundamentals with enterprise-scale platform leadership, including experience building high-fanout communication systems, integrating third-party platforms, implementing conversational and agentic AI, and establishing automated performance and quality engineering practices.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role. The Senior Manager will partner closely with product, architecture, security, program, and business leaders while mentoring engineers and establishing engineering practices that balance speed, quality, scalability, security, and operational stability.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and develop software engineering teams responsible for communications, quality, and customer engagement platforms.
• Establish technical vision, architecture, engineering standards, and development practices aligned with WGU's technology strategy.
• Lead the design and evolution of highly scalable messaging, notification, presence, and high-fanout delivery platforms supporting email, SMS, push, and omnichannel communications.
• Provide technical leadership for telephony and communications platforms, including technologies such as Genesys, Twilio, Amazon Connect, and NiCE.
• Lead engineering efforts involving conversational AI and agentic systems, including chatbots, voice agents, intent detection and routing, multi-agent workflows, and tool-using agents operating across chat, voice, email, and SMS.
• Partner with product and business leaders to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions and prioritize investments across platforms and capabilities.
• Establish and continuously improve automated testing, load testing, stress testing, performance engineering, and quality practices.
• Ensure systems meet demanding requirements for 24x7 availability, scalability, performance, accessibility, security, and reliability.
• Guide engineering teams through architectural trade-offs involving usability, performance, security, maintainability, cost, and speed of delivery.
• Drive integration of third-party products and services with WGU's existing technology ecosystem.
• Identify technical risks, dependencies, constraints, and compatibility issues early; develop alternatives and contingency plans to protect project outcomes.
• Establish strong engineering practices around design, development, testing, documentation, deployment, observability, and operational readiness.
• Ensure student and institutional data is handled securely and in compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and WGU policies.
• Collaborate across product, project, program, architecture, security, infrastructure, and other technology teams to deliver complex initiatives.
• Mentor engineers and technical leaders, establish development plans, and build a culture of ownership, collaboration, continuous improvement, and technical excellence.
• Participate in hiring, performance management, talent development, and organizational planning.
• Stay current with emerging technologies and rapidly evaluate their potential application to WGU's platforms and customer experiences.

What You'll Bring

Technical Leadership

• 10+ years of software engineering experience developing web-based applications, APIs, and distributed systems.
• 2+ years leading professional software engineering teams; 5+ years of engineering leadership experience preferred.
• Strong experience with Java, REST, JSON, web technologies, databases, APIs, and enterprise integrations.
• Demonstrated experience designing and operating high-scale, highly available production systems.
• Experience with messaging, notification, presence, or high-fanout delivery platforms.
• Experience with enterprise communications or telephony platforms such as Genesys, Twilio, Amazon Connect, or NiCE.
• Experience implementing conversational AI and agentic systems, including chatbots, voice agents, intent detection/routing, multi-agent workflows, and tool-using AI systems.
• Experience with automated testing and load/stress testing of production applications and platforms.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, distributed systems, scalability, reliability, security, and performance engineering.

Leadership & Business Acumen

• Ability to translate business objectives into technical strategy and executable engineering plans.
• Proven ability to lead through ambiguity, make sound architectural decisions, and balance short-term delivery with long-term platform health.
• Strong judgment and analytical problem-solving skills, with the ability to identify and resolve risks early.
• Ability to influence across organizational boundaries and build productive relationships with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to clearly explain complex technical concepts to executives, business leaders, and engineering teams.
• Bias for action while maintaining high standards for security, reliability, quality, and user experience.
• Strong attention to detail and ability to manage multiple complex initiatives in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to quickly learn and effectively apply new technologies.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• 2+ years leading software engineering teams.
• 2+ years of experience owning or leading messaging, notification, presence, or high-fanout communications platforms.
• 2+ years managing or engineering telephony and messaging platforms, such as Genesys, Twilio, Amazon Connect, or NiCE.
• 2+ years of experience implementing conversational AI and/or agentic systems across channels such as chat, voice, email, and SMS.
• 2+ years of experience with automated testing and load/stress testing of software applications.

Preferred Qualifications

• 5+ years leading software engineering teams.
• Master's degree in computer science, information technology, engineering, or a related field.
• Experience leading engineering organizations through significant platform modernization or transformation.
• Experience operating mission-critical, customer-facing systems in a 24x7 enterprise environment.
• Experience with cloud platforms and modern distributed/cloud-native architectures.
• Experience establishing engineering quality, reliability, observability, and performance standards across multiple teams.
• Experience evaluating and adopting emerging AI technologies in production environments.

Why This Role Matters

WGU serves a large and diverse student population through technology platforms that must be available, secure, scalable, and easy to use around the clock. Communications and quality engineering sit at the intersection of technology, student experience, and operational excellence.

As Senior Manager, you will have the opportunity to shape the platforms and engineering practices behind how WGU communicates with students, delivers critical information, and increasingly uses AI to create more responsive and intelligent experiences.

Position & Application Details

Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.

Additional Information

Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It's not all-inclusive.

Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at recruiting@wgu.edu.

Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.