At 2U, we are all in on purpose. We are motivated by our mission – to make learning limitless– and connected by our shared passion to deliver world-class higher education at scale. As the parent company of edX, a leading online learning platform, 2U powers thousands of higher education offerings – from free courses to full degrees. Together with our college, university, and corporate partners, we are helping accelerate careers and transform lives.
What We’re Looking For:
2U is looking for a highly technical, hands-on Director of Software Engineering with deep experience in modern cloud-native architectures, distributed systems, and full-stack platform development. This role combines technical leadership, architectural ownership, and delivery accountability across large-scale digital platforms supporting student/learner experience, applications, and data ecosystems.
This is not a traditional management-only role. You will operate as a player-coach, actively engaging in system design, architecture reviews, and technical decision-making while leading globally distributed engineering teams.
You will own both how systems are built and how they are delivered, ensuring scalable, secure, and high-performing platforms aligned with business outcomes. The ideal candidate has built and scaled complex systems, understands trade-offs deeply, and can drive end-to-end delivery with strong engineering rigor.
Responsibilities Include, But Are Not Limited To:
Engineering & Platform Leadership
- Own and drive the architecture and engineering strategy for scalable, cloud-native platforms across student/learner experience, applications, and data ecosystems.
- Lead the design and evolution of systems using:
- Backend: Python, Ruby on Rails, Clojure, or Elixir
- Frontend: React, TypeScript, or HTML/CSS
- Data: MySQL, PostgreSQL
- Define and implement API-first, microservices, and event-driven architectures using modern design patterns.
- Establish architectural standards across frontend, backend, and integrations, including scalability, resiliency, security, and performance optimization.
- Drive build vs. buy vs. partner decisions, balancing speed, cost, and long-term platform ownership.
- Ensure systems are designed for high availability, observability, and global scale.
Delivery, AI & DevOps Execution
- Act as a hands-on technical leader across engineering and DevOps, owning how systems are designed, built, deployed, and operated
- Lead architecture and design reviews, code quality, and resolution of complex production issues
- Own end-to-end delivery and operations, including release cycles, system reliability, uptime, and performance
- Drive DevOps practices across:
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Argo
- Containers: Docker, Kubernetes (EKS)
- Infrastructure as Code: Terraform