Principal, Product Management

Pearson • United States,

1d • $190,000 - $220,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

This role aligns to industry level titles such as Principal Product Manager. We are hiring a Principal Product Manager to own product area(s) within our Content Authoring Platform – a critical enterprise platform enabling educational content creation, assembly, and reuse at scale across Higher Education, K-12, English Language Learning, and Enterprise. You will operate with genuine ownership of your area: defining the problems worth solving, driving continuous discovery, and partnering with engineering and design to deliver outcomes that matter to users and the business. We embrace an SVPG-inspired Product Operating Model, empowering our product teams to solve hard customer and business problems – in ways that our customers love, yet work for our business. Product companies depend on strong products, and strong products come from strong product teams. And we recognise that product teams are only as strong as their product managers. This is an empowered IC role – we expect you to think strategically, work hands-on, and bring a clear point of view rather than wait to be told what to build. You will be focused on either a specific business unit's content authoring needs or against a horizontal capability, and in either case, you will be the primary product voice for your area. You will need to balance BU-specific requirements against platform-wide coherence, and serving a varied user base from authors and content producers through to developer consumers of platform APIs.

Requirements

• 6+ years of product management experience, with a track record of owning a product or area end-to-end – from discovery through to measurable outcomes.
• Strong discovery skills using both generative and evaluative methods; ability to translate insight into product decisions.
• Experience with platform or B2B2C products serving multiple user types, ideally including both user-facing applications and developer-facing services.
• Technical acumen – comfortable on architecture and API discussions, and able to make informed trade-offs without needing every detail explained.
• Data fluency – defines metrics, plans measurement, works with instrumentation, uses quantitative signals alongside qualitative insight.
• Hands-on experience with current AI tools in your own product work, including prompt engineering and a clear view of when AI is and is not the right tool.
• Strong written and verbal communication – clear opportunity assessments, user stories, and strategic framing that gives teams real direction.
• Stakeholder management in complex organisations – competing priorities, influence without authority, trust-building across functions.

Nice To Haves

• Background in content management systems, authoring tools, publishing technology, or related domains.
• Experience in education technology, media, or content-intensive industries.
• Practical experience with AI/ML product development beyond generative AI – classification, recommendation, NLP, vision.
• Experience with content atomisation, structured content, or modular content architectures.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain a clear vision, value proposition, and roadmap for your area, grounded in user insight, business priorities, and platform strategy.
• Set outcome-driven goals (OKRs or equivalent) with leading and lagging indicators planned up front – measurement is part of the design, not an afterthought.
• Make deliberate trade-offs between competing user needs, BU requirements, and platform-wide concerns.
• Contribute to platform-level strategy, bringing your area into broader roadmap discussions and shaping coherent cross-area decisions.
• Build first-hand understanding of your users – their jobs-to-be-done, pain points, and the contexts in which they work – through regular direct engagement.
• Run continuous discovery using both generative and evaluative methods: customer interviews, usability testing, behavioural analysis, and rapid prototyping.
• Develop empathy for indirect users too – the learners, educators, and administrators who experience the downstream products your platform powers.
• Work with engineering and design as a single team, sharing problem framing and solution design rather than handing over requirements.
• Act as ‘player coaches’, contributing to building the team – sharing what you learn, mentoring peers, helping raise the bar.
• Write clear product artefacts – PRDs, specs, capability definitions, user stories – at the right level for the team, so engineering can build without constant clarification.
• Manage scope and sequencing thoughtfully, balancing strategic bets against near-term commitments and operational needs.
• Engage credibly with engineering on architecture, API design, and technical trade-offs relevant to your area.
• Identify and evaluate relevant AI capabilities in a pragmatic way – generative AI, prompt engineering, ML-assisted workflows, intelligent content tools – impact vs feasibility.
• Stay tech-curious beyond AI – devices, ecosystems, adjacent platform shifts – when they shape how content is created and consumed.
• Build strong working relationships with engineering, design, data, and BU partners; operate effectively in a matrix without direct authority.
• Communicate strategy, progress, and trade-offs clearly to senior stakeholders; surface risks and decisions early.
• Tell a clear product story – what problem you are solving, for whom, why it matters, and what 'good' looks like – so the team and your stakeholders move in the same direction.

Benefits

• This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program
• information on benefits offered is here [https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://pearsonbenefitsus.com/&data=04|01|[email protected]|2c256513c79f4679be7c08d9e7287ebb|8cc434d797d047d3b5c514fe0e33e34b|0|0|637794983376381246|Unknown|TWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0=|3000&sdata=t1YQPUL7BgoclUd7yE2i86QAirLf4z3z8OEWgr42q7c=&reserved=0]

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed