Principal, Product Management

Role Description

This role aligns to industry level titles such as Principal Product Manager.

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 recognize that product teams are only as strong as their product managers.

We are hiring an experienced product manager to contribute to our core assessment team for Higher Education. You will be focused on evolving the objective assessment experience to respond to an AI-enabled world, while also maintaining our large, devoted, existing base.

Qualifications

• 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; ability to translate insight into product decisions.
• Experience with 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, with 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.

Requirements

• 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, GTM needs, and platform-wide concerns.
• 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 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.
• Lead build/buy/partner analysis to help Pearson HE decide where to invest development dollars and where to partner to fast-track solutions.
• Work with engineering and design as a single team, sharing problem framing and solution design rather than handing over requirements.
• 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.
• Build strong working relationships with engineering, design, data, content, and GTM 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

• The minimum full-time salary range is between $160,000 - $180,000.
• This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program.
• Information on benefits offered is available.

Bonus Experience

• Background in educational technology.
• Practical experience with AI/ML product development beyond generative AI – classification, recommendation, NLP, vision.
• Experience with modernizing a software while maintaining the existing user base.