Technical Program Management Director, Education

Learning Commons • Redwood City, CA

83d • $225,000 - $309,100

About The Position

Learning Commons is Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s education initiative, which aims to scale proven teaching and learning practices to benefit every learner. Learning Commons became the name of our education efforts in 2025 to build on the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s work over the past decade to advance learning science and help translate that research into classroom practice. At Learning Commons, we pair technology with grantmaking to scale proven teaching and learning practices to benefit every learner. We aim to translate what learning science tells us about how students learn best into classroom practice. With the advent of generative AI, that translation work can be accelerated and scaled to have a greater impact. Our mission is to bring learning science into the tools used every day by teachers and students, ensuring that technology reflects the realities of classrooms and strengthens teaching and learning. In today’s fragmented edtech landscape, school districts are often left piecing together products that don’t always align with curricula or instructional needs. While AI holds enormous potential to support educators, it can only deliver on that promise when grounded in research, high-quality educational data, and expert evaluation. That’s why we’re building open, public-purpose infrastructure — datasets, rubrics, and resources — that help raise the standard for educational tools and create more consistent, impactful learning experiences for all students and teachers.

Requirements

• Proven leadership: Minimum 10 years of experience managing in complex sectors like education, enterprise, or government, along with 5 or more years of leadership experience leading and managing technology teams.
• Technology Management Expertise: Prior experience working closely with software teams as a technical program manager, product manager or engineering manager is a plus.
• Strategic Mindset: Deep organizational and managerial intelligence and experience that helps you innovate on approaches to supporting teams with professional backgrounds spanning sectors towards unified strategy, goals and roadmaps.
• Collaboration and Influence: Exceptional at relationship-building and influencing others to move towards bigger goals.
• First Principles and Analytical Decision Making: Comfortable with the ambiguity of exploration and innovation.
• Process Design: You can see around corners organizationally and operationally to identify where issues stem from and structural gaps in process and/or leadership.
• Creativity and Humility: People want to work with you because you are excellent at what you do, always trying to innovate, create, and improve.
• Passion for Education: Strong intrinsic drive to help deliver impact at the opportunities at the intersection of technology and education.

Responsibilities

• Drive Impact: Partner with other leaders of the Education team to set an operational strategy for our resources - time, people, funds - that enables us to do unique cross-sector work across philanthropic, education, and technology sector values and strengths.
• Optimize Process: Lead and support overall organizational execution and team culture by designing and directing program management practices and processes that enable our strategic goals, tactical work, and the culture and values we need and desire.
• Foster Collaboration: Work with product, engineering, and partnership leaders to lead and manage the significant processes that support leadership team alignment, execution, and accountability.
• Champion Innovation: Develop and own processes that enable efficient decision-making, communication, delegation, and accountability; monitor organizational health and plan around corners in the spirit of continuous improvement.
• Cultivate Team Excellence: Manage a small but mighty team of technical and non-technical program managers who operate critical projects and processes.
• Be Flexible: Demonstrate adaptability and proactive problem solving by anticipating challenges and opportunities and adjusting strategies and your scope as needed to drive change, continuous improvement and innovation.

Benefits

• Generous employer match on employee 401(k) contributions.
• Annual benefit for employees that can be used for housing, student loan repayment, childcare, commuter costs, or other life needs.
• Life of Service Gifts awarded to employees to support the causes closest to them.
• Paid time off to volunteer at an organization of your choice.
• Funding for select family-forming benefits.
• Relocation support for employees who need assistance moving to the Bay Area.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Bachelor's degree