What are the responsibilities and job description for the Lead Software Engineer - People Leader position at Elsevier?
Must be able to work in North Andover Mass without requiring relocation assistance.
Are you a collaborative Lead Software Engineer looking to work for a mission driven global organization?
About the Role - We are seeking a Software Engineering Lead / Tech Lead to lead a high-performing team of engineers in the design, delivery, and operation of scalable, secure, and reliable software solutions. This is a hands-on leadership role combining technical direction, people leadership, and delivery ownership. Alongside guiding architecture and delivery, you will mentor engineers, improve team performance, and help create software that is secure, maintainable, well-tested, and operationally sound.
About the team – This team supports scholarly publishing technology products. These products are aligned to manuscript submission, peer review, and publishing workflow platforms for academic journals and publishers. This team works closely with Product, Architecture, Design, DevOps, and other stakeholders to shape technical solutions, deliver business value, and build an inclusive, collaborative engineering culture.
What You Will Do
As a Software Engineering Lead / Tech Lead, you will be:
- Providing hands-on technical leadership through coding, reviews, troubleshooting, and support for complex engineering challenges. Mentor, coach, and develop engineers, helping them grow their skills and careers
- Leading the design, architecture, development, deployment, and support of complex software solutions and product features
- Defining and communicating technical direction in alignment with product goals and broader business priorities
- Partnering with Product and cross-functional stakeholders to refine requirements, guide discovery, and translate business needs into practical technical solutions
- Ensuring software is high quality, secure, scalable, reliable, performant, maintainable, and well documented
- Driving strong engineering practices including clean code, code reviews, testing, AI use, CI/CD, and continuous improvement
- Leading planning, estimation, sprint execution, and delivery discussions, helping the team balance speed, quality, and long-term sustainability
What We’re Looking For
You will likely bring:
- Significant software engineering experience, including experience leading engineers or technical delivery.
- Experience leading technical decision-making, resolving complex issues, and working across multiple teams and stakeholders
- Possess extensive experience with one or more modern programming languages such as Python, Java, C#, .NET, JavaScript, or TypeScript
- Understanding of software architecture, APIs, distributed systems, scalability, performance, and security
- Experience working with AWS and modern engineering tooling such as Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, DevOps practices, and infrastructure automation
- Knowledge of Agile ways of working, including backlog refinement, estimation, sprint planning, and retrospectives
- Excellent communication, collaboration, and organizational skills
- Experience mentoring or line managing engineers, including supporting performance, development, and team growth
- A pragmatic approach to decision-making, with the ability to balance technical quality, business value, and delivery outcomes
Elsevier employs 10,000 people worldwide, including over 2,500 technologists. We have supported the work of our research and health partners for more than 140 years. Growing from our roots in publishing, we offer knowledge and valuable analytics that help our users make breakthroughs and drive societal progress.
Digital solutions such as ScienceDirect, Scopus, SciVal, ClinicalKey and Sherpath support strategic research management, R&D performance, clinical decision support, medical education, and nursing education. Researchers and healthcare professionals rely on over 2,800 journals, including The Lancet and Cell; 46,000 eBook titles; and iconic reference works, such as Gray's Anatomy. With the Elsevier Foundation and our external Inclusion & Diversity Advisory Board, we work in partnership with diverse stakeholders to advance inclusion and diversity in science, research and healthcare in developing countries and around the world.