Chief Architect

At 2U, we are all in on purpose. We are motivated by our mission – to eliminate the back row in education – and connected by our shared passion to deliver world-class digital education at scale. As the parent company of edX, the world’s leading online learning platform, 2U powers more than 4,000 online higher education offerings – from free courses to full degrees. Together with more than 230 colleges, universities, and corporate partners, we are helping to unlock human potential.

What We’re Looking For:

The Chief Architect will be responsible for defining and overseeing the architectural direction of 2U’s technology platform. The role will provide strategic leadership in designing, developing, and implementing robust, scalable, and efficient systems and solutions that align with 2U's long-term technology roadmap. The Chief Architect will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, mentor technical staff, and stay abreast of emerging technologies and industry best practices. The position will report to the EVP and Head of Technology.

The Chief Architect will work across the full technology stack including frontend and back end technologies.  Some examples of core technologies include Gitlab, AWS, Postgres, Redis, Datadog, Amplitude, Snowflake, Anglular/React, NodeJS and Django.

Responsibilities Include, But Are Not Limited To:

• Oversee the technical direction for Engineering’s full-stack web development projects and system architecture.
• Define and maintain a clear technology roadmap that outlines the evolution of systems, platforms, and technologies to support 2U's growth and innovation.
• Help ensure 2U’s engineering teams strike the right balance between building quickly and building sustainably, and build vs. buy decision making. 
• Design, document, and inform others on 2U’s architectural plans.
• Consult with software engineering leadership on their areas of product ownership.
• Establish and enforce architectural standards, best practices, and coding guidelines to ensure consistency and quality across projects.
• Identify potential technical risks and challenges and develop mitigation strategies. Proactively address scalability, security, and performance concerns in collaboration with the CyberSecurity and SRE teams.
• Effectively communicate architectural decisions and strategies to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Work closely with Engineering, Product teams, and senior leaders to ensure alignment between architecture and business needs.

Things That Should Be In Your Background:

• 10 years of experience in the field of software engineering.
• Proven experience as a Chief Architect or in a similar senior architecture role.
• Proven experience in technology transformation and evolution from siloed technologies to a modern, consolidated platform.
• Advanced knowledge and experience in one or more of the following languages: Ruby, Python, Javascript.
• Deep expertise in full-stack web development, system design, and using modern web technologies & cloud-based infrastructure 
• Experience architecting solutions in a cloud-native context (AWS….)
• Strong leadership, collaboration and communication skills.
• Experience building service-oriented applications and architecting.
• Experience with event-driven applications using queues, service bus, and other related patterns.
• Expertise with modern software development lifecycle best practices, including Agile.
• Ability to independently collaborate with multiple cross-functional teams.
• Experience with common web frameworks and associated technologies (Rails, Node, Angular/React, JWT, SQL, etc.) preferred.
• Experience with the education technology business domain and education-specific technical standards preferred.
• Experience with eCommerce preferred.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related major or equivalent work experience.

While this position is open to remote candidates across the U.S., we will prioritize those who live in the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area and who are available to come into our Headquarters in Lanham, MD two days a week.

Benefits & Culture

Our global employee base is a diverse collection of innovators, dreamers, and doers working together to transform lives through higher education. We believe that every employee can advance our shared purpose, and that life at 2U should be fun and meaningful. If you’re excited by the opportunity to provide over 40 million learners and counting with access to world-class online higher education, then join us – and do work that makes a difference. #NoBackRow

We offer comprehensive benefits (unique per country) a