Principal Product Manager

Pearson

6d•$119,000 - $221,000•Remote

About The Position

We embrace the SVPG Product Operating Model by empowering our product teams to solve hard problems – customer problems and business problems – in ways that our customers love yet work for our business. Our product teams are cross-functional, durable, and generally comprised of a product manager, product design, tech lead and a program manager (4-in-a-box model). We staff our product teams with the skills necessary to come up with effective solutions that are valuable (our customers choose to buy or use), viable (the solution works within the many constraints of the business), usable (the user can figure out how to use) and feasible (our engineers have the skills and technology to implement). While the product designer is accountable for ensuring the solution is usable, and the engineers are accountable for ensuring the solution is feasible, the product manager is accountable for ensuring the solution is both valuable and viable. This means that the product manager must contribute to their product team a solid knowledge of the various constraints of the business such as from marketing, sales, support, finance, legal and privacy. The product manager must also contribute a deep knowledge of our users and customers, and data about how our customers engage with our products. Finally, the product manager is expected to track industry trends and the competitive landscape as they pertain to their product. While each member of the product team may be accountable for a specific risk, we look for product managers that understand that consistent innovation is the result of each member of the product team contributing their passion and their ideas. The product manager must collaborate closely with their product designer and engineers to discover effective solutions and then work together to deliver those solutions to market. While we empower our product teams to figure out the best solutions to the problems that need to be solved, we also hold those teams accountable for the results. Shipping is necessary, but not sufficient. We look for product managers that are not afraid of signing up for results, even when this means they have to work through others to achieve the necessary results. In this role, the Principal Product Manager will focus on foundational platform capabilities that are leveraged by multiple product teams across Pearson. This includes defining product strategy, outcomes, and roadmaps for shared capabilities that enable scalability, performance, and innovation across a complex product ecosystem. This job, as with the other roles on the product team, is an individual contributor role. You will need to be able to influence your teammates, as well as colleagues, stakeholders, and key executives, through your use of data and logic.

Requirements

Proven track record as an advanced individual contributor product manager leading high-stakes, technically complex product initiatives from strategy through release with measurable business outcomes.
Demonstrated systems-thinking and architectural fluency, with experience shaping shared product capabilities or frameworks in close partnership with architects, engineers, and functional leads.
Strong ability to operate with independent decision-making and high autonomy, including navigating ambiguity, making informed tradeoffs, and escalating critical risks when appropriate.
Demonstrated success driving cross-functional alignment at senior and executive levels, marshaling resources across teams to deliver coherent, enterprise-impacting outcomes.
Highly analytical and data-informed, with experience translating customer insights, usage data, and performance signals into clear product direction and prioritization.
Proven ability to solve complex problems with many constraints, articulating recommendations through well-structured, written narratives grounded in data and sound judgment.
Experience working with modern enterprise and cloud-based architectures, including API-driven systems and integration patterns (e.g., REST APIs, event-driven or service-to-service models).
Exceptional communication skills, including the ability to condense complex technical concepts into clear, non-technical language and eliminate ambiguity for diverse stakeholder audiences.