Director of Product Management, Literacy
About The Position
We’re looking for a seasoned product leader who knows how to turn big potential into a clear path forward. A seasoned product leader who knows how to turn unmet market demand into products that win and can bring a complex, cross-functional organization together to make that happen. As our Director of Product Management, Literacy, you’ll lead the strategy and success of a growing product portfolio at an important stage in its lifecycle. You’ll connect long-term product vision with disciplined execution—bringing clarity to priorities, guiding investment decisions, and leading cross-functional teams from discovery and strategy through launch and growth. A major part of your impact will be helping us bring our Literacy solutions to market successfully. You’ll work across Product, Marketing, Sales, Engineering, UX, Customer Success, and Literacy experts to understand educators and districts, analyze competitors and market trends, identify unmet demand, validate opportunities, define differentiated product strategies, and translate those insights into executable go-to-market plans. You don’t need to be an ELA expert on day one. You do need to be an experienced product leader who understands customers, markets, and go-to-market strategy—and knows how to bring people together around a vision and turn it into results.
Requirements
- 7+ years of progressively responsible product management experience, with demonstrated ownership of product strategy, go-to-market, launches, and growth; experience in EdTech, education publishing, or SaaS is especially valuable.
- Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent relevant experience; an advanced degree is a plus.
- A track record of leading go-to-market strategy, including cross-functional launch planning, market segmentation, positioning, launch sequencing, and sales enablement.
- Experience leading products across the lifecycle and using customer insights, market data, prioritization frameworks, and performance measures to make sound product and investment decisions.
- Proven ability to lead complex, cross-functional initiatives, create alignment across teams, and make decisions confidently in ambiguous environments.
- Experience leading, coaching, and developing product talent with a balance of accountability, autonomy, and support.
- Strong business acumen and communication skills, with the ability to connect customer needs and product decisions to measurable business outcomes and communicate effectively from working teams through senior leadership.
Nice To Haves
- Familiarity with K–12 education, curriculum products, or state adoption cycles is a strong plus; deep ELA expertise is welcome but isn’t required.
Responsibilities
- Start with the market. Stay close to educators, districts, state adoption priorities, customers, Sales, and competitive moves to understand what is changing in the Literacy market and where meaningful unmet demand exists. Turn those insights into clear opportunities and recommendations for where Carnegie Learning should invest.
- Turn opportunities into product strategy. Define the customer and market opportunity, the problem we are solving, the value we will deliver, how we will differentiate, and what success looks like. Make clear decisions about what we should build, what we should not build, and why.
- Lead the product strategy from idea to market. Translate market opportunities into a product vision, strategy, roadmap, and investment plan that Product, Engineering, UX, Marketing, Sales, and Literacy experts can understand and execute against. Bring the right people together and drive the work forward. Lead cross-functional teams around a shared strategy, clear outcomes, ownership, milestones, dependencies, and decisions. Create the operating rhythm that keeps complex initiatives moving and step in when teams are blocked, priorities conflict, or decisions need to be made.
- Own the GTM strategy. Lead the cross-functional team in defining who we are targeting, what unmet need we are solving, why customers should choose us, how we will differentiate, where we will launch first, and what it will take to win. Work closely with Marketing and Sales to turn the product strategy into positioning, messaging, campaigns, sales narratives, enablement, and commercialization plans.
- Drive launch readiness. Bring Product, Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Professional Learning, Operations, and other teams together around an integrated launch plan. Establish the critical path, owners, milestones, readiness criteria, risks, and decisions required to launch successfully.
- Lead through launch. Make sure the organization is ready not only to release the product, but to sell it, implement it, support it, and drive adoption. Lead launch reviews, surface risks and tradeoffs, and make recommendations about timing and sequencing.
- Stay accountable for what happens in the market. Monitor pipeline, bookings, adoption, usage, customer feedback, competitive response, and other measures of success. Bring the market back into the organization and use what we learn to adjust the product, positioning, messaging, GTM strategy, or investment.
- Make portfolio decisions. Look across the Literacy portfolio to determine where to scale, improve, reposition, expand, or stop investing. Balance near-term commercial opportunities with longer-term product and market opportunities.
- Keep leadership aligned. Regularly communicate the market opportunity, product strategy, GTM plan, launch readiness, performance, risks, investment needs, and tradeoffs to senior leadership bringing clear recommendations, not simply status updates.
Benefits
- Holistic Wellbeing An inclusive range of Health Insurance options, including a premium-free plan
- Short-Term and Long-Term Disability Insurance at no cost to you
- Access to Headspace at Work with no added cost, empowering you to enhance your mental health
- Fostering Joy Flexible work arrangements with our Work From Anywhere Policy
- Your Time, Your Way - paid time off that you can use as you see fit to recharge and nurture your personal life
- Empowering Parenthood Paid Parental Leave
- Reduced working hours on full pay for soon-to-be and new parents
- Free access to CL products for employees and their children
- A Place for Connection Quarterly Wellness Incentives
- Monthly employee activities + recognition program
- 9 Employee Resource Groups
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
