Director of Content Engineering

📋 Description

• • Lead and manage a multidisciplinary team of six content engineers, fostering a collaborative and high-achieving culture focused on delivering consistent, scalable user experiences across College Board's digital products and websites.
• • Guide and grow the team's expertise in structured content modeling, metadata design, content workflows, and content-system integrations, ensuring they develop domain-specific skills while building transferable competencies across various systems like Drupal, DITA/XDocs, headless content APIs, and item-authoring platforms.
• • Set clear vision and priorities for the Content Engineering team, effectively track progress against goals, and provide ongoing coaching and support to ensure team members meet and exceed expectations, remain engaged, and contribute meaningfully to the organization's mission.
• • Cultivate an inclusive and high-achieving team environment that embodies College Board’s Operating Principles and Manager Expectations, empowering all members to thrive.
• • Serve as the organization's hands-on expert in DITA and modular structured authoring, directly contributing to the evolution of College Board’s DITA/XDocs environment.
• • Enhance topic structures, reuse patterns, constraints, specializations, and publishing workflows within the DITA ecosystem to improve efficiency and scalability.
• • Drive the expansion of DITA system usage to incorporate new content types and support a wider array of platforms and audiences, aligning these changes with product needs and broader content engineering practices.
• • Evaluate current content structures, proposing thoughtful and safe evolutions that promote greater reuse and flexibility, ensuring content models are robust, maintainable, and adaptable for the future.
• • Collaborate closely with product teams to prototype new content structures and authoring approaches, ensuring alignment with user needs and business objectives before broader rollout.
• • Partner with design systems, frontend engineering, product designers, and content creators to ensure structured content seamlessly integrates with component-driven UI systems and meets product requirements.
• • Work with engineering teams to develop and refine transformations, APIs, and integrations that facilitate the smooth flow of content from authoring systems to downstream consumers.
• • Provide clear, actionable guidance and comprehensive documentation to assist teams in adopting and effectively utilizing structured content practices across the organization.
• • Translate ambiguous workflow and content challenges into structured, scalable, and maintainable solutions, demonstrating a strong problem-solving capability.
• • Foster a culture of continuous improvement by encouraging experimentation with emerging technologies, including AI-driven solutions, and promoting a proactive approach to learning and adopting new digital tools.
• • Champion a learner's mindset, welcoming diverse perspectives, providing and receiving timely, respectful feedback, and continuously refining processes based on user input and iterative learning.
• • Drive for impact and excellence by solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing effectively, and continuously improving through learning and external benchmarking.
• • Employ a collaborative and empathetic approach, working effectively across differences, building trust, and contributing to a culture of shared success and mutual support.
• • Ensure all team activities and strategic decisions align with College Board's mission of expanding educational and career opportunities.
• • Manage the content systems that power College Board’s digital products and websites, ensuring they are robust, maintainable, and flexible for future needs.
• • Steward a diverse set of content systems, including Drupal-based CMS workflows, headless content APIs, and item authoring platforms, ensuring their optimal performance and integration.
• • Partner with platform product leadership to support a broad community of content creators working with various authoring tools and systems.
• • Unify practices and strengthen the discipline of content engineering across the organization, promoting best practices and shared standards.
• • Contribute directly to the development and evolution of content models, authoring workflows, metadata structures, and publishing systems that underpin College Board's digital presence.
• • Engage with an established XDocs user community, fostering adoption and providing support for DITA-based structured authoring.
• • Steward and evolve content systems, ensuring they remain current, efficient, and aligned with technological advancements and organizational goals.
• • Drive operational excellence within the Content Engineering team, focusing on system stewardship and close collaboration with cross-functional partners.
• • Facilitate clear communication and knowledge sharing between technical and non-technical stakeholders regarding content engineering strategies and implementations.
• • Ensure compliance with metadata standards, taxonomies, and content lifecycle governance principles in all content engineering initiatives.
• • Develop and implement strategies for content reuse and modularity, enhancing efficiency and consistency across digital platforms.
• • Oversee the integration of structured content with modern web technologies and content delivery networks.
• • Contribute to the strategic roadmap for content technology at College Board, identifying opportunities for innovation and improvement.
• • Ensure the team's work directly supports product development and enhances the user experience for students, educators, and other stakeholders.
• • Implement and maintain robust content workflows that streamline the creation, management, and publication of educational content.
• • Foster a culture of continuous learning and professional development within the team, encouraging the exploration of new tools and methodologies in content engineering.
• • Actively participate in the hiring and onboarding process for new content engineers, ensuring the team continues to grow with top talent.
• • Manage vendor relationships and evaluate third-party tools and solutions relevant to content engineering needs.
• • Ensure the security and integrity of content management systems and published content.
• • Drive the adoption of content engineering best practices across the organization, acting as a subject matter expert and advocate.
• • Measure and report on the effectiveness of content engineering initiatives, using data to inform future strategies and improvements.
• • Collaborate with accessibility teams to ensure structured content meets all relevant accessibility standards.
• • Develop and maintain comprehensive documentation for content models, workflows, and system integrations.
• • Lead by example, demonstrating a commitment to quality, innovation, and user-centric design in all aspects of content engineering.
• • Proactively identify and address potential risks and challenges in content systems and workflows.
• • Ensure the team's work is aligned with College Board's strategic objectives and contributes to its overall mission and success.