Advanced Specialist , Technology Delivery

Role: Advanced Specialist, Technology Delivery
Location: Bengaluru, India - Hybrid (3 days in office per week)

About the Role

We are looking for an experienced Technology Delivery Manager to drive the delivery, coordination and operationalization of Pearson's Observability Engineering and Command Center/NOC capabilities.

This is a senior individual-contributor role responsible for orchestrating complex, cross-functional technology initiatives across Observability Engineering, SRE, Platform Engineering, Cloud Engineering, application/product teams, service management and operational partners.

The role will provide end-to-end delivery leadership across the Observability Engineering roadmap and the establishment and evolution of the Command Center/NOC operating model.

The Technology Delivery Manager will ensure that initiatives progress from strategy and roadmap through implementation, onboarding and operational readiness, while proactively managing risks, dependencies, stakeholders and delivery commitments.

At IC25, the role is expected to operate with a high degree of autonomy, take ownership of complex workstreams, identify systemic delivery challenges, propose solutions rather than simply escalate problems, influence cross-functional stakeholders, improve delivery practices and mentor others.

Key Responsibilities

1. Observability Engineering Delivery

Own and coordinate delivery of the Observability Engineering roadmap across Platform Engineering, SRE, Cloud Engineering and application teams.

Responsibilities will include:

• Drive delivery of observability initiatives from planning through implementation and operational adoption.
• Coordinate application and platform onboarding into enterprise observability capabilities.
• Track delivery of monitoring, telemetry, alerting, dashboards and operational visibility initiatives.
• Coordinate dependencies associated with New Relic, Grafana and other approved observability capabilities.
• Drive delivery against agreed observability standards covering monitoring, alerting and operational readiness.
• Coordinate observability enablement and adoption across engineering teams.
• Track risks, blockers and dependencies affecting observability initiatives and drive them to resolution.
• Ensure roadmap initiatives have appropriate milestones, ownership, delivery status and governance.

This is aligned with Pearson's stated direction of centralized governance with distributed execution for observability, including publishing consistent monitoring, alerting and operational-readiness standards.

Your current roadmap also includes platform instrumentation, self-service telemetry onboarding, APM/OTEL rollout, New Relic/Grafana access governance, AI-assisted alert triage and SLI/SLO tracking.

2. Command Center / NOC Delivery

Drive the establishment, onboarding and continuous evolution of the Command Center/NOC operating model.

The role will:

• Coordinate the transition from the current operating model toward the target Command Center/NOC model.
• Manage delivery plans, milestones, dependencies, risks and readiness activities for implementation.
• Coordinate onboarding of services and applications into the agreed NOC operating model.
• Help establish clear operational handoffs between the NOC, Observability Engineering, SRE, platform teams, product/application teams and incident-management functions.
• Coordinate delivery of runbooks, escalation paths, operational procedures and supporting documentation required for onboarding.
• Track readiness and dependencies across monitoring, event management and ITSM integrations.
• Coordinate the resolution of delivery gaps between Pearson teams and strategic service partners.
• Ensure issues requiring engineering intervention are routed to the appropriate technical teams through clearly defined escalation pathways.

Pearson's current Command Center Model describes the target model as Observe → Triage → Act → Escalate, incorporating monitoring, prioritization and enrichment, runbook-based L1 actions, incident creation/routing and escalation to appropriate technical or incident-management functions.

We position the NOC as the first line for proactive monitoring alerts, initially supporting Platform Engineering applications and potentially expanding later.

3. Program & Technology Delivery

Independently own complex delivery across multiple interconnected workstreams.

• Develop and maintain integrated delivery plans.
• Define milestones, dependencies and critical-path activities.
• Drive activities through to completion without requiring close supervision.
• Proactively identify risks and emerging delivery problems.
• Diagnose root causes and bring options and recommendations rather than simply escalating issues.
• Manage scope and priority changes.
• Ensure delivery commitments and decisions are documented.
• Maintain RAID logs, delivery dashboards and appropriate governance artifacts.
• Facilitate sprint and delivery planning where applicable.
• Ensure dependencies between engineering teams, operational teams and external partners remain visible and actively managed.

This is particularly relevant to your intended model because you have already identified sprint planning and ongoing Observability/NOC delivery as responsibilities appropriate for the TDM.

4. Application & Service Onboarding

Establish a predictable delivery process for onboarding services into Observability Engineering and the Command Center/NOC.

• Coordinate onboarding requirements with application, infrastructure and SRE teams.
• Ensure appropriate monitoring and operational-readiness prerequisites are identified.
• Track onboarding progress, blockers and outstanding dependencies.
• Coordinate the operational handover into BAU processes.
• Ensure onboarding materials, ownership and escalation paths are available.
• Identify opportunities to standardize and automate repeatable onboarding activities.
• Work with engineering teams to reduce manual coordination and improve onboarding scalability.

Pearson's documented Observability BAU scope already includes New Relic/Grafana access and administration, wallboard onboarding, data-source connectivity validation, synthetic checks, dashboard verification, platform health checks, initial incident triage and standard platform onboarding requests.

5. Delivery Governance, Metrics & Reporting

Create strong visibility of delivery health and progress across Observability Engineering and NOC initiatives.

• Establish appropriate delivery governance.
• Maintain roadmap status and delivery reporting.
• Track risks, dependencies, decisions, issues and actions.
• Provide concise reporting to Platform Engineering and technology leadership.
• Use delivery data to identify bottlenecks and drive improvements.
• Coordinate delivery health reviews and stakeholder checkpoints.
• Ensure roadmap and delivery records remain current.
• Capture lessons learned and incorporate improvements into future delivery.

Delivery metrics and dashboards have already been identified as an important consideration in Pearson's broader Platform Engineering operating-model discussions.

The Observability and NOC initiatives are also being incorporated into the longer-term technology roadmap.

6. Stakeholder & Cross-Functional Leadership

Act as a central delivery coordination point across the technology organization.

Build strong working relationships across:

• Observability Engineering
• SRE
• Platform Engineering
• Cloud Engineering
• Application and Product Engineering
• Service Management
• Incident Management
• Security
• Technology leadership
• Strategic technology/service partners

The role will translate strategy and technical objectives into coordinated delivery activities and ensure stakeholders understand status, dependencies, decisions and risks.

The position should be capable of facilitating difficult cross-team conversations and resolving coordination gaps without needing formal organizational authority.

7. Vendor & Partner Delivery Coordination

Coordinate delivery activities involving strategic partners supporting the Command Center/NOC and Observability operating model.

• Translate Pearson requirements into clear delivery expectations.
• Track partner commitments, dependencies and deliverables.
• Coordinate scope clarification and operational-readiness activities.
• Validate delivery dependencies with internal technical teams.
• Facilitate delivery reviews and issue-resolution discussions.
• Escalate material delivery risks with options and recommendations.
• Ensure internal and external teams have aligned expectations around responsibilities and handoffs.

This is highly relevant to the current role because Pearson has been working through Command Center scope, sizing, workload inputs, operating-model boundaries and commercial considerations with its external partner.

8. Operational Readiness & Service Transition

Ensure new capabilities move cleanly from project delivery into sustainable operations.

• Define and track operational-readiness requirements.
• Coordinate readiness reviews before services enter BAU support.
• Ensure operational ownership and support routes are established.
• Ensure escalation paths and handoffs between NOC, SRE, engineering and support teams are understood.
• Coordinate runbook and operational-documentation readiness.
• Identify operational gaps and drive corrective actions before onboarding.
• Capture lessons from operational issues and feed them back into delivery improvement.

The current Observability BAU model includes platform health validation, synthetic validation, initial incident triage, alert acknowledgment, basic root-cause identification, log collection, documentation and escalation to appropriate teams.

Expectations

The Technology Delivery Manager is expected to demonstrate:

Autonomous Ownership

Take end-to-end ownership of complex delivery areas with minimal supervision.

Complexity Management

Manage interconnected technology initiatives involving multiple teams, systems, stakeholders and dependencies.

Outcome Orientation

Focus on measurable delivery outcomes rather than simply tracking activities.

Problem Solving

Identify root causes, formulate options and drive resolution rather than acting only as an escalation mechanism.

Cross-Functional Influence

Influence priorities and outcomes across teams without relying on direct reporting authority.

Strategic Context

Understand how individual initiatives contribute to wider technology, reliability and operational objectives.

Continuous Improvement

Improve delivery processes, governance and operating practices rather than simply following established processes.

Mentoring & Knowledge Sharing

Support and mentor less-experienced delivery practitioners and help increase delivery capability across the organization.

Stakeholder Credibility

Communicate confidently with engineers, delivery leaders, business stakeholders, partners and senior technology leadership.

Experience & Qualifications

Required

• 7+ years of experience in technology delivery, technical project/program management or a related technology-delivery discipline.
• Experience independently managing complex technology initiatives involving multiple workstreams and cross-functional dependencies.
• Strong understanding of modern technology operations, cloud, infrastructure, DevOps, SRE or observability environments.
• Strong delivery planning, risk management, dependency management and stakeholder-management capabilities.
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex technical initiatives into structured delivery plans.
• Experience operating in large enterprise technology environments.
• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Strong executive and technical communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to influence outcomes without direct authority.

Preferred

• Experience delivering Observability, SRE, Platform Engineering or Cloud Engineering initiatives.
• Familiarity with observability concepts including metrics, logs, traces, APM, alerting, dashboards and operational telemetry.
• Exposure to technologies such as New Relic, Grafana, Datadog, Splunk and OpenTelemetry.
• Experience working with Jira, Confluence or equivalent delivery-management platforms.
• Understanding of ITSM and incident-management practices.
• Experience working with enterprise technology partners or managed-service providers.
• Agile, Scrum, ITIL, PMP or equivalent certification/experience.

Pearson's environment currently uses New Relic as a centralized observability service, alongside other technologies including Datadog, Splunk and native hyperscaler alerting, with Jira Service Management and ServiceNow forming part of the service-management landscape.

What Success Looks Like

Success in this role means:

Predictable Delivery
Observability Engineering and NOC initiatives have clear ownership, plans, dependencies and measurable progress.

Scalable Onboarding
Services move through Observability and operational-readiness onboarding using repeatable processes rather than ad-hoc coordination.

Operational Readiness
Observability signals translate into well-defined triage, action and escalation pathways.

Reduced Delivery Friction
Cross-functional dependencies and blockers are identified early and resolved before they materially impact commitments.

Executive Visibility
Leadership has concise, accurate and actionable visibility of delivery progress, risks and decisions.

Continuous Improvement
The role leaves processes, governance and operating practices stronger than it found them.

Trusted Delivery Leadership
Engineering teams and leadership see the Technology Delivery Manager as the person who brings structure to complex initiatives and arrives with options when delivery problems emerge.