Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. McGraw Hill is dedicated to delivering digital learning experiences that transform education for learners and educators. The Sr Software Engineer is responsible for bridging the Data Engineering and AI Platform application teams, ensuring alignment with Data Enablement standards while building integration tooling and providing technical guidance to application teams.
Responsibilities
- Write custom event schema extensions for each application across three prioritized cohort groups, translating app reporting requirements directly into schema definitions and data contracts
- Code alongside application teams during event emission integration — provide hands-on SDK implementation support, pair-program through instrumentation challenges, and directly debug emission issues in application environments
- Consult with application teams on schema design decisions, event naming conventions, and integration patterns — review app-team-authored schemas and implementation plans to ensure alignment with the canonical event spec and Data Enablement standards before work proceeds
- Provide technical guidance during app team sprint planning and design sessions to prevent misalignment early, reducing rework during validation cycles
- Build and maintain integration tooling and automation: validation scripts, schema linting tools, and diagnostic utilities that accelerate per-app onboarding and reduce manual troubleshooting cycles
- Author integration runbooks, troubleshooting guides, and go-live readiness checklists grounded in first-hand implementation experience with each application
- Execute schema upgrade migrations hands-on across all three application groups, writing migration scripts, running backward-compatibility checks, and managing per-app migration instances
- Validate event conformance against the canonical event schema by running integration tests, inspecting pipeline output, and certifying each application based on direct technical evidence
- Advise app teams on self-service integration practices — coach teams toward independent schema extension and event emission capability so that later cohorts require less direct hands-on involvement
- Diagnose and resolve non-standard integration patterns directly; escalate to the Platform Architect only when patterns require architectural changes to the platform itself
Skills
- 5+ years of experience in software integration engineering, data platform integration, or hands-on technical delivery across distributed systems
- Strong proficiency writing and validating event schemas (JSON Schema, Avro, or Protobuf) — not just reviewing them, but authoring and iterating on them with application teams
- Hands-on experience instrumenting telemetry, logging, or analytics events directly in application codebases (Python, Node.js, Go, or equivalent)
- Proficiency in SQL and data architecture, including query optimization, data modeling and designing scalable, well-structured data systems
- Experience designing and integrating RESTful APIs, including endpoint design, authentication patterns, and consuming or exposing APIs across distributed systems
- Demonstrated ability to work concurrently across multiple application codebases (4–5 simultaneous app engagements expected) while maintaining quality and context-switching effectively
- Proficiency with Python SDKs — able to write integration code, build diagnostic scripts, and extend developer enablement tooling
- Strong communication and consulting skills — able to explain platform standards and integration patterns to app teams with varying levels of data engineering maturity, and to influence technical decisions without direct authority
- Strong written communication skills for producing runbooks and migration guides rooted in direct implementation experience
- Experience building integration automation: schema linting tools, conformance validators, or self-service onboarding pipelines
- Experience with medallion architecture (bronze/silver/gold) data platforms
- Familiarity with Databricks, Azure cloud services, or similar data infrastructure
- Prior work in EdTech, AI/ML platforms, or multi-product SaaS environments
- Experience writing and executing schema migration scripts with backward-compatibility validation
- Track record of coaching or enabling distributed teams to adopt platform standards independently
Benefits
- An annual bonus plan may be provided as part of the compensation package
- A full range of medical and/or other benefits, depending on the position offered
Company Overview