Market Development Manager

Hawkes Learning; Kentucky; On-site; USD 90,000 - 125,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401(k) match

30+ days paid time off

Employee Assistance Program

Culture is energetic and collaborative

Job summary

Hawkes Learning is an educational technology company focused on helping college students succeed through courseware. The Market Development Manager will bridge market needs with product strategy, gathering customer insights and guiding content evolution to meet educators' and institutions' needs.

The role requires collaboration with product, marketing, and sales teams, leading advisory boards, and traveling ~30% during peak selling periods.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in market development, product management, product marketing, business development, or sales.
• Experience partnering with product leaders to inform or validate product vision, strategy, roadmap direction, or growth initiatives.
• Experience conducting customer research, market analysis, competitive assessments, and opportunity evaluations.
• Experience developing recommendations supported by data, customer insights, and business analysis.

Responsibilities

• Validate product strategy through market insights and competitive analysis to align investments with customer needs.
• Collect and analyze Voice of Customer (VoC) data from multiple sources to generate actionable insights.
• Identify new market opportunities and develop strategies to introduce products into new markets.
• Deliver insights to inform platform development and content strategy to increase adoption and market share.
• Collaborate with Product Marketing to define target profiles and ensure alignment of messaging.
• Act as a product evangelist in the market and lead advisory boards and focus groups with travel during peak periods.
• Support Sales by providing customer feedback and adoption strategies.

Skills

Customer insight synthesis

Strategic thinking

Cross-functional collaboration

Storytelling & presentation

Math market expertise

Job description

As an educational technology company, Hawkes Learning is passionate about helping college students succeed through our innovative courseware. By partnering directly with college professors and recommending personalized learning solutions for their classrooms, we are rapidly expanding the implementation of Hawkes learning solutions into physical and virtual campuses nationwide.

Reporting to the Chief Product Officer, the Market Development Manager serves as the critical link between market needs and product strategy. This role is responsible for identifying and validating growth opportunities, gathering and synthesizing customer insights, and helping ensure Hawkes' products and content evolve to meet the needs of educators and institutions. This highly collaborative, customer-facing role combines strategic thinking, market expertise, and advocacy to help accelerate Hawkes' growth and strengthen its position in the education market.

Responsibilities

• Product Strategy Validation: Partner with Product Leads to evaluate and validate product vision, strategy, and roadmap decisions through market insights, customer engagement, opportunity assessment, and competitive analysis. Serve as a strategic advisor to ensure product investments align with customer needs and market opportunities.
• Aggregate Voice of Customer (VoC): Collect and analyze customer feedback from multiple sources (sales, marketing, surveys, conferences, advisory boards, interviews) to generate actionable insights for product and content decisions.
• Market Development and Seeding for New Markets and Products: Conduct competitive analysis to identify new market opportunities. Develop and execute strategies to introduce products (new or revisions) into a market to gather feedback, refine products, and build awareness, credibility, and initial adoption.
• Strategic Guidance: Deliver insights to inform both platform development and content strategy with the goal of increasing adoption and market share.
• Partner with Product Marketing: Collaborate to ensure messaging reflects customer needs, competitor positioning, and product differentiation. Define target profiles to ensure the right customers are involved in outreach efforts.
• Product Evangelist: Serve as a primary Product Advocate in the market, leading advisory boards and focus groups, with approximately 30% travel during peak selling periods (Oct/Nov and Feb/Mar) for conferences and direct customer engagement as products are developed.
• Sales Champion: Assist Sales organization by providing feedback from their customers and suggestions on how to advance the adoption.

Skills

• Customer Insight Synthesis: Ability to distill large amounts of feedback into actionable themes and recommendations.
• Strategic Thinking: Understands the big picture across products, markets, and customer segments; able to connect short-term moves to long-term goals.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Adept at aligning product, marketing, sales, content, and leadership stakeholders.
• Storytelling & Presentation: Strong communicator who can explain insights, rationale, and recommendations to diverse audiences—executives, sales teams, customers – with a focus on sales presentations for large opportunities.
• Math Market Expertise: While the role is pan-discipline, Math expertise is a priority and a must-have requirement for the role given installed base and new sales opportunities.

Experience

• 5+ years of experience in market development, product management, product marketing, business development, or sales.
• Demonstrated success identifying and evaluating market opportunities and translating insights into strategic business recommendations.
• Experience partnering with product leaders to inform or validate product vision, product strategy, roadmap direction, or growth initiatives.
• Experience conducting customer research, market analysis, competitive assessments, and opportunity evaluations.
• Experience developing recommendations supported by data, customer insights, and business analysis.

The salary range for this role is competitive and considers a variety of factors, including skill sets, experience, training, certifications, and other business and organizational needs. Our comprehensive benefits package includes 30+ days of paid time off to start with additional time each year of employment, an employer 401(k) match of up to 3.5%, and a significant employer contribution to healthcare benefits. While we prefer candidates located in the listed locations, we value talent from all locations, so please don't hesitate to share your resume with us! Hawkes Learning is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace.

• Generous Health Benefits (Medical insurance, Vision and Dental insurance)
• Employer Match to Health Savings Account
• Employer paid Employee Assistance Program with counseling options
• Employer Match to 401k retirement plan
• Culture is energetic, supportive, collaborative, and transparent!