Director Of Product Jobs

Role: Director of Product

Location: Remote

Organization

The Advanced Education Research and Development Fund (AERDF) is a national nonprofit initiative that supports ambitious Inclusive R&D programs designed to tackle intractable teaching and learning challenges that disproportionately affect Black and Latino students and students of all races experiencing poverty. We identify compelling leaders with ambitious goals for improving student learning to serve as Executive Directors. To reach those goals, Executive Directors build on existing evidence from learning science to design multi-year Inclusive R&D programs to translate fundamental insights into more useful practices, approaches and tools.

Assessment for Good (AFG), which sits within AERDF, is an Inclusive R&D program focused on dramatically improving conditions for the academic, emotional, and social wellbeing of learners aged 8 through 13, with a special focus on Black and Latinx populations. By leveraging an asset-based approach to assessment, relevant information that values the diversity of student and educator experiences can be used to create an environment that is rich in opportunities to thrive.

Opportunity for Impact

AFG is currently organized around a set of prototype and product focus areas spanning five core areas of learner wellbeing (Emotional Development, Engagement & Belonging, Executive Function, Learning Time, Social Development). They are seeking a Director of Product (DoP) to help advance this work and play a pivotal role in shaping how Assessment for Good achieves and scales learner experience through asset-based frames for wellbeing that are welcomed by learners, their caregivers, and their educators. Reporting to the Executive Director and working closely with cross-functional technical leaders, the DoP will oversee a portfolio of assessment solutions for which they will set vision/direction, identify user pain points and value-creation opportunities, and lead teams to define and deliver prototypes and products that help AFG innovate assessment solutions for learners from underserved demographics. This is an ideal opportunity for a mission-driven product leader who possesses an updated understanding of child development and learner experience and is motivated by disrupting educational inequity.

Role and Responsibilities

• Develop and implement short term plans aligned with long term goals to iteratively build platform capabilities to better support learners, educators, and parents.
• Evaluate new prototype opportunities and securing investment opportunities (buy, build, partner solutions) for new capabilities with data privacy and user experience at the forefront.
• Present prototype roadmap and status to program and organizational leadership and advisory on an ongoing basis. Communicate concisely about and influencing outcomes across each of the components across AFG’s integrated prototypes.
• Refine the assessment criteria used to determine prototype viability and continuously monitor/assess prototypes across the portfolio, which includes down-selection as needed
• Identifying and managing talent needs across product, design, data visualization, data privacy, and engineering on an ongoing basis.
• Oversee, lead, and manage technical teams throughout the prototype development process.
• Assemble, lead, and collaborate with a cross-functional group of product managers, engineers, designers, and operations managers to ensure alignment, execution, and launches, including managing a growing team of staff and/or contractors.
• Create and maintain AFG’s master product roadmap and supervise development backlogs across initiatives, coordinating with AFG team members in implementation and research and development.
• Build alignment across AFG’s implementation teams, research team members, and Operations team members. Anticipate bottlenecks, making tradeoffs and balancing the program needs, customer needs, and technical or operational constraints.
• Lead cyclical analysis related to product competitors and overall assessment of the product market.
• Ensure that the larger team has a shared vision of the potential of each technical prototype, current status of each technical prototype and potential evolution pathways of the technical prototype, both in near and long term.
• Create, assess, and update vision and strategy for assessment and intervention prototypes.
• Drive prototype features through their entire creative cycle: ideation, specification, development, release, analysis, and iteration.
• Define goals and success with clearly measurable objectives and key results.
• Own the prioritization process for AFG’s integrated set of prototypes based on value creation and user impact.
• Establish an advisory group of consultants in data privacy and security that are eager to tackle new privacy-protecting technological capabilities that leads to best-in-class, user friendly, and transformative assessment solutions.

Professional Qualifications

• Prior product, operation, or engineering experience in Pre-K12 Education Technology or similar preferred.
• At least 5 years of direct product management or equivalent experience with proven experience in design and hypothesis-driven product development.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Able to effectively work in a remote environment, using technology (Zoom, Slack, Google suite, Notion, Jira) to collaborate and are able to travel periodically for in-person team meetings, retreats, prototyping and pilot visits, convenings and conferences.
• Great analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills.
• Experience working in early-stage organizations or initiatives, and know how to manage the ever-evolving strategy and capacity needs of startups.
• Strong organizational and team leadership skills; ideally has led teams through ambiguity and high stakes trade off decisions.
• Deeply user-centered and committed to building a product with and for priority student groups, specifically Black and Latinx learners with and without disabilities.
• Experience managing budgets and resources; unafraid to make difficult decisions in the name of prioritization in order to maximize return on investment and drive optimal outcomes

Personal Characteristics

• High degree of emotional intelligence, self-awareness and a relationship-orientation that inspires and motivates others.
• Highly collaborative teammate - you enjoy cross-functional work and shared ownership of goals and processes.
• Demonstrated commitment to anti-racism, diversity, equity, inclusion and justice and is known as an inspiring leader of diverse teams
• Mission-driven and believe deeply in the transformative power that asset-based paradigms can have in disrupting educational inequity.
• Entrepreneurial drive to achieve stretch goals in a fast-paced environment.

Additional Info & Compensation

AERDF offers a competitive compensation package including base salary and comprehensive benefits. AERDF is a remote and flexible work environment and base compensation levels vary depending on location, experience, and qualifications. The starting salary range for this Level 5 - Director position is $141,000 - $203,000. AERDF is deeply committed to the diversity of its workforce. People of all backgrounds, particularly those with the lived experience of the students and communities AERDF serves, are encouraged to apply. Please do not hesitate to apply even if all of the qualifications are not met. Candidates of all backgrounds and identities are encouraged to apply. People of all backgrounds are encouraged to apply.

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