Advanced Specialist, Product Management

Pearson•United States,

2d•$120,000 - $135,000•Remote

About The Position

This requisition is part of the Pearson School Assessment team, which aims to develop world-class assessment technology platforms. The key responsibilities of this position will be to take on the day-to-day platform leadership of Navvy+, the PreK–12 formative and screening platform within our School Assessment portfolio. Navvy+ delivers standards-level Competency Checks, Universal Screening and Progress Monitoring, growth measurement, and the reporting that brings actionable value to educators. It serves districts and state assessment programs and forms part of the Pearson Assessment for Learning Suite. We are currently engaged in building our next generation assessment platform, which is a multi-year project with enormous strategic value, leveraging state of the art technologies and processes.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, business management (MBA preferred), or equivalent experience managing large assessment technology platforms.
Deep understanding of technology, to communicate with cross-functional team members.
Experience working in JIRA, Confluence and SharePoint for planning, documentation and tracking.
Proven track record of thriving in a fast-paced software development team, and/or 5+ years in the PreK–12 education technology space, academic assessment, or instructional products.
Solid background in stakeholder management, customer support, and basic agile methodology.
Experience taking a product from concept to live users and shipping it on a fixed date without customer-impacting incidents, and ability to articulate what was cut to achieve this.
Experience as the product counterpart to an engineering team, writing requirements, running backlog and defect priority, and taking a full part in agile ceremonies.
Practical fluency with AI tooling in your own working method, including prototyping, feasibility checks, drafting, documentation and analysis, with sound judgement about where its output has to be verified before anyone acts on it.
Strong attention to detail, and a clear sense of what is not good enough to ship.
Strong logical reasoning, and excellent written and oral communication skills.
Ability and desire to work as part of a virtual team.

Nice To Haves

MBA preferred

Responsibilities

Bring clarity to the vision and forward-thinking product ideas that engage and excite our engineering teams.
Support moving capabilities from concept to live use: understand the problem, define the version worth releasing, prototype it, specify it, and deliver it.
Own the delivery of the Navvy+ roadmap, sequencing it against available capacity, weighing the relative priority of each incoming problem to keep the team focused on the right work, and communicating directly with those whose work has been deferred.
Look continually for ways to improve the platform and the services around it, and bring forward creative, workable solutions that account for both existing and new users.
Translate problems into requirements an engineering team can build from without further clarification, sign off those requirements, and manage backlog and defect priority.
Participate in stand-ups and iteration planning alongside the Navvy+ engineering lead, a Pearson development team, and an external delivery partner.
Assist in test case development and quality assurance process documentation.
Map out, communicate and manage the product release schedule, coordinating district needs against development readiness, and define and hold the conditions that must be met before a release ships.
For each release, provide release notes and product documentation sufficient to support implementation, training and support teams.
Create strong alliances with diverse stakeholders and act as the connective point across engineering, product, measurement, content, implementation, support, marketing, sales and leadership, gathering requirements, translating competing needs into product decisions, and sustaining momentum from development through to adoption.
Define requirements for AI-assisted features with data science and engineering, assessing the risks and potential for bias, and specifying the guardrails, transparency and human oversight each feature needs.
Communicate with engineers and other technologists and give them confidence that you understand the problems they are solving.
Occasional travel will be required.
Other duties may be assigned.