Market Manager - Alabama

Primer; Birmingham (AL); On-site; USD 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Primer is hiring a Market Manager in Alabama, a key role responsible for leading educational operations and driving growth. The role demands an education leadership background and the ability to navigate complex challenges while ensuring quality standards across all schools.

Successful candidates will work with multiple teams, launch new schools, and foster relationships within the community to enhance enrollment and operations. The position requires adaptability and proactive engagement for mission-driven outcomes.

Qualifications

• Must have experience in education leadership, ideally within a physical school environment.
• Ability to create scalable systems out of chaos.
• Past accountability to aggressive growth and expansion targets.

Responsibilities

• Ensure Primers meet academic and operational standards.
• Partner with various teams for overall success.
• Drive student growth by testing new strategies.
• Manage local relationships with families and education leaders.

Skills

Education leadership experience

Ability to navigate ambiguity

Relationship building

Fast-paced execution

Disruptive innovation experience

Education

Experience as Superintendent or similar

Job description

About Primer

Primer is a growing network of K–8 schools restoring the timeless foundations of American education. Inspired by the original teaching primers that shaped a nation of readers, thinkers, and builders, our schools begin with what has always worked, and build for what lies ahead. Close-knit learning environments. Skilled educators. A culture that takes kids seriously as learners and leaders.

Primers shaped the first 200 years of American children. Primer will ready them for the next.

About the role

We’re hiring a Market Manager in Alabama: a high impact role that serves as Primer's leader within a market and reports to the Alabama General Manager. You'll be accountable for the growth and educational operations of Primer in Alabama.

We're looking for an executor with an education leadership background who is comfortable operating in high opacity environments and keeping multiple balls in the air. You'll be launching new Primers, supporting existing Primers, driving enrollment growth, and generally ensuring that we’re meeting the Primer standard for students and families across Alabama. And finally, because this role is brand new, you'll have an opportunity to help design the role, build playbooks, and influence what success looks like for future hires.

You might spend your morning working with the real estate team to evaluate a new location, your mid-day modeling active monitoring for new Primer Leaders and providing live feedback, your afternoon re-designing the pickup/drop-off plan for an existing campus, and your early evening hosting an Open House at a new campus.

As our footprint in Alabama grows, this role will continue to evolve and you will evolve with it. What we're trying to do is extremely hard – there's a reason it hasn't been done before. There's a good chance this role will be the hardest work of your life. If you find that slightly-daunting-but-exciting, this might be the role for you.

Responsibilities

• Ensure Primers across Alabama are meeting the Primer standard across all dimensions, from the academic program to campus operations.
• Partner with real estate, education, operations, marketing, and admissions teams to ensure the success of every Primer within a region of Alabama.
• Drive student growth by testing new local strategies. When they work, you'll help playbook the ideas so they can be leveraged in every city.
• Own many of Primer's local relationships, including families and leaders in the education community.

What We're Looking For

• Must have experience in education leadership, ideally within a physical school environment as a Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent, or Principal.
• You're a builder and self-starter. You don't need to be told what to do. You have experience navigating ambiguity and creating scalable systems out of chaos.
• You can execute at a fast pace while holding a high bar for quality. This may sound a bit cliche, but it's incredibly important.
• Past accountability to aggressive growth, revenue, margin, and expansion targets.
• Proven ability to build strong relationships both internally and externally.
• A generalist willing to roll up their sleeves and get stuff done – both in the weeds and at the strategic level.
• Experience disrupting the status quo - either with new school models, new policies, or something else that removes constraints and drives innovation.

Why this role may not be a fit

• You do your best work in structured environments. There is no established playbook here — for the role or the company. You'll be writing it while strategy shifts and priorities evolve around you. If that sounds exhausting rather than energizing, this isn't the right fit right now.
• You prefer to specialize. This role demands genuine comfort toggling between strategic decisions and operational detail — sometimes in the same hour. If you'd rather go deep on one function, this won't feel like a fit.
• You prefer a fully remote, hands off environment. Primer is a consumer-facing education business. Evenings, weekends, and nontraditional hours — Travel and attendance to open houses, school events, parent meetings — are part of the rhythm, not the exception.

Primer is a mission-first company. We believe our mission is the highest-leverage way we can create positive change. In service of that, we keep work centered on mission execution and avoid social or political activism at work that’s unrelated to the mission. If that energizes you, we’d love to see you apply.