Senior Product Manager

The purpose of Zearn

Zearn is the nonprofit educational organization whose mission is to inspire all kids to love learning math. Everything we do is driven by our belief that every kid is a math kid.

Our top-rated learning platform is designed to catch kids up and move them forward in grade-level math. And it works. Large-scale efficacy research shows students who use Zearn make significant gains in math proficiency, including the students who start multiple grade levels behind.

As a nonprofit, all of our work is driven by what is best for kids. At the same time, we operate as an intense and fast-moving technology company, inclusively solving hard problems that will impact current and future generations. The problems we solve require expertise in teaching, learning science, software development, design, video production, and countless other disciplines. As an organization that is always stretching to get to the next level of impact, every single person owns mission critical work.

If you’re ready to join our Team of problem solvers, and own work that will drive us to achieve impact at scale, we are looking for you.

Learn more about us at https://about.zearn.org/.

The purpose of the Senior Product Manager role at Zearn is to partner with product leaders, engineers, designers, and educators to solve complex user problems and translate solutions into delightful experiences for educators. This is achieved by: 

• Powering innovation through product discovery, leading a team through research, ideation, rapid prototyping, and user-centric iteration to deliver impactful solutions and mitigate go-to-market risks.  

• Leverage data, user feedback, and market research to continually assess the impact of the product roadmap, identify areas of opportunity, prioritize which problems to solve, and quickly iterate to find the most efficient solutions to solve them
• Given a problem, generate ideas for creative approaches to meet user needs 
• Create low fidelity sketches to illustrate your product vision, facilitate early collaboration, and test your thinking
• Partner with design to develop wireframes and interactive prototypes to illustrate new product concepts, gather team and stakeholder input, and validate ideas with users
• Partner with engineering to refine approach, understand technical tradeoffs, and address risks to ensure the product is viable to build
• Anticipate and mitigate potential go-to-market risks throughout the solutioning process
• Managing the end-to-end product development process for multiple projects in parallel
• Ensure the team is consistently focused on the highest priority work for Zearn, and understand how that work contributes to broader Zearn initiatives and mission
• Translate user needs into detailed product requirements, specifications, and timelines
• Partner with design to develop wires into intuitive, accessible, brand-aligned products
• Work to quickly clear design and development roadblocks as they arise, thoroughly addressing every edge case of the user experience
• Ensure features are delivered on time and function as desired, elevating particularly complex or risky changes to other areas of the product
• Ensure product launches are followed by quick, data-driven iteration cycles
• Developing deep cross functional relationships to understand internal dependencies, anticipate and clear execution risks, and prepare teams for launch
• Deeply understand team workflows in order to anticipate what and when each team needs to know about upcoming product changes
• Effectively tailor communications so that each team has a clear understanding of features and timelines at the appropriate level of detail for their work
• Prepare necessary go-to-market collateral for each team

Problems someone in this role can be expected to tackle:

• How can Zearn’s reporting suite support District and School leaders in implementing Zearn?
• How can Zearn create a seamless onboarding experience for educators (teachers, school leaders, district leaders) and families when they sign in to Zearn for the first time? 
• How can Zearn increase educator engagement with the platform in order to drive impact?
• What is Zearn’s strategy for individual or school-level account management and communications as enterprise buyers (e.g. large districts, state education agencies) change purchasing policies? 
• How can new technologies, such as generative AI, enable Zearn to drive impact at scale? 
• How do we continuously improve our team processes and tools and strengthen cross-functional collaboration? 

SKILLS: Below are the skills we believe would be impactful for this role. A strong candidate will demonstrate strengths in leading people, communication, collaborative problem solving, strategic thinking, and project management. But more importantly, we are looking for candidates who are excited to develop and improve these skills through continuous coaching and on-the-job apprenticeship.

Leading Individuals:

• Aligning a team through vision, strategy, goals, and priorities
• Leading fast and inclusive problem-solving interactions
• Keeping a team well-organized

Written and Verbal Communication:

• Sharing your perspective productively
• Communicating with structure

Generating Insight:

• Gathering customer or expert feedback to create insightful ideas
• Conducting qualitative customer research to create insightful ideas
• Using competitive or academic research to create insightful ideas
• Conducting numerical analyses to generate insight

Solving Problems:

• Building internal networks to solve problems
• Leading experiment-based problem solving
• Leading consensus and straw model-based problem solving
• Leading analysis-based problem solving

Project Management:

• Managing your and your team’s goals and priorities 
• Organizing and leading meetings
• Deadline-oriented execution

Process Management:

• Continuously improving your team’s workflow and processes

POTENTIAL MARKERS OF THESE SKILLS:

• 8+ years of work experience, with 3+ years in Product Management; Education experience is a plus
• Deep experience collaborating with stakeholders in all functions and levels of a technology organization
• Bachelor’s Degree required

This role is a Managerial role 

Title: Senior Product Manager

Direct Reports: This is an individual contributor role initially, with the expectation that the team will quickly grow to 1-2 direct reports

HOW WE WORK:

• We aim to create a numeracy movement. This is no easy feat, and no one of us can solve this on our own.  Given that, Zearn is a transparent, collaborative, and open-to-feedback culture. 
• Our daily work on the product team is dynamic and fast-paced. We aim to maximize our velocity, but we put quality first. This requires dedicated time for independent research and deep thinking to understand each problem space and build a hypothesis, as well as frequent team and stakeholder syncs to enable fast feedback from functional experts.
• Product teams are organized around problem spaces, and you will build weekly rhythms with your cross-functional team of engineers, designers, and data scientists to define and deliver products that elegantly solve priority user problems.
• We meet regularly as a product team to share context, discuss new learnings across different areas of the product, and brainstorm opportunities to improve as a team.
• We seek ways to create and improve systems and processes and work with each other to contribute thinking in both asynchronous and synchronous discussions.

LOCATION:

This role is remote, however you may be required to travel for business and team building meetings.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

The compensation range for this role is $130,000 - $150,000 per year.

We offer a competitive benefits package, including comprehensive medical, dental and vision plans, short- and long-term disability, life insurance, 401K matching, parental leave, and a flexible PTO policy. We also offer a collegial and passionate culture and the potential to positively impact the lives of millions of children.

TO APPLY: https://apply.workable.com/j/3108CB4D0F

Zearn is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.