Senior Manager, Software Engineering — Communications & Quality

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career. 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 715 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