Principal, Product Management

Pearson; Dover (DE); On-site; USD 165,000 - 185,000; Full time

Job summary

Pearson is seeking a senior product manager/strategist to lead content standards, taxonomy design, and AI-enabled workflows across business units. You will work hands-on at Pearson’s edges, collaborating with content leaders to rebuild production processes and lift capabilities across editorial, design, and engineering teams.

The role emphasizes ownership of content systems, continuous discovery, and coaching of other PMs while driving measurable quality and outcomes in education content

Qualifications

• Seven or more years of product management experience in content, publishing, or content platforms.
• Hands-on ownership of content standards work: taxonomy and metadata design, quality frameworks, and structured content.
• Experience with authoring, production, and delivery platforms (CMS, DAM, LCMS) including migrations.

Responsibilities

• Embed the standards spine inside real business unit work with a focus on global quality data and 95% target accuracy.
• Redesign and shorten production workflows, reducing handoffs and rework.
• Partner with content leaders to align strategy, planning, and craft.
• Guide teams to high-quality plans and content strategy traceable to learner jobs and business outcomes.
• Design and deliver training anchored in real content problems.

Skills

Content strategy

Product management

Cross-functional leadership

Taxonomies & metadata

AI tooling in content

Editorial workflow

Education

Advanced degree

Tools

CMS

DAM

LCMS

XML-based content systems

Job description

At Pearson, we are committed to helping people make progress in their lives through learning. We create innovative and accessible educational products and services that foster personal and professional growth.

About the Role

Pearson is standardizing how content gets planned, built, and measured. The Content Excellence work effort exists to give every business unit a common spine to build on: shared quality and data standards, one enterprise fact base, a single creation platform and repository per market segment, a defined content job family, and a practical foundation for AI in content workflows.

We embrace an SVPG-inspired Product Operating Model, and we are extending it into how content gets made. Strong content comes from strong content teams, and those teams are only as strong as the product managers guiding them.

We are looking for a senior product manager and/or strategist who can do this work hands-on at Pearson’s hardest edges, while influencing the senior content PMs and leaders responsible for those areas. This is a role for someone who will sit alongside the content BU teams, model a taxonomy with them, rebuild a broken production workflow alongside the team that runs it, and leave those teams stronger than they found them.

Who you are

You are a customer-obsessed, curious, hands-on product manager who is good at working at multiple levels and x-discipline. You know content craft better than most, and you are married to the principles over the process. You are comfortable in the machinery: taxonomies, metadata schemas, authoring and production platforms, editorial workflow, and the measures that tell you whether quality is actually improving. You experiment with current AI tools, you have shipped with them in the last year, and you have a sharp view on where they add value in content work and where they do not. You break problems down, you teach by working alongside people, and you care about education enough to lift the bar across the business.

What you’ll work on

Embedded content build and standards

• Implement the standards spine inside real business unit work rather than in the abstract: global quality data standards, the V1 taxonomy, and metadata accuracy held to the 95 percent target.
• Redesign and shorten production workflows with the people who run them, removing handoffs and rework rather than adding process.
• Partner with content leaders xPearson through content strategy, planning, and craft, including those who push back hard, earning that standing by doing the work alongside them.
• Guide teams to high-quality plans and content strategy that trace to learner jobs and business outcomes, and to the right artifacts at the right level of fidelity, from MRDs to PRDs and specs.
• Design and deliver training anchored in Pearson’s real content problems rather than generic curricula.
• Contribute to the content job family and career architecture, and help the community of practice become something people show up to because it is useful.
• Build AI fluency across the content talent base in a practical, applied way.
• Identify the manual content tasks worth automating, build or prototype the automation, and prove the value before it scales.
• Bring evaluation, telemetry, and human-in-the-loop design to AI-assisted content generation and quality assurance, so that quality claims can be substantiated.
• Keep a clear, current point of view on where AI helps content work and where it does not.
• Role model how content works with product, engineering, design, and editorial.

What we’re looking for

• Seven or more years of product management experience, with that experience concentrated in content, publishing, or content platform domains, and with demonstrable technical depth.
• Hands-on ownership of content standards work: taxonomy and metadata design, quality frameworks, structured content, and the measurement that shows whether any of it landed.
• Direct experience with authoring, production, and delivery platforms (CMS, DAM, LCMS, structured or XML-based content systems), including at least one consolidation or migration you personally helped deliver.
• Personally built and shipped substantive content systems work as the owning PM, including with current AI tooling. At least one significant build in the last 12 to 18 months, not oversight of others who built.
• Experience in empowered product team models (SVPG-style or similar) where the unit of ownership is an outcome rather than a delivery list, with strong experience participating in, and ideally creating, value-centric planning processes such as QBRs or roadmap planning.
• Track record running rigorous continuous discovery, both generative and evaluative, and translating it into outcomes for content.
• Track record redesigning production workflows and proving the productivity or quality gain that resulted.
• Experience coaching other PMs and leaders, including those more senior, more experienced, or more skeptical than you, without alienating them.
• Strong written and verbal communication. Clear, concrete, and effective with both technical and senior business audiences.
• Comfortable shifting between hands‑on execution and coaching in the same week.
• Background as a content architect, managing editor, publishing operations lead, technical PM, or technical founder with hands‑on build experience.
• Experience designing and delivering PM training or coaching programs for content teams.
• Experience in education, assessment, or other content‑intensive and regulated industries.
• Working knowledge of accessibility standards and how to meet them at scale.
• Advanced degree, or equivalent demonstrated depth.
• Strong analytical and conceptual problem‑solving capabilities.

Compensation at Pearson is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and specific location. As required by the California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York State, New York City, Vermont, Washington State, and Washington DC laws, the pay range for this position is as follows:

The minimum full‑time salary range is between $165,000 - $185,000.

This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program, and information on benefits offered is here.

Applications will be accepted through 2nd October. This window may be extended depending on business needs.

Who we are:

At Pearson, our purpose is simple: to help people realize the life they imagine through learning. We believe that every learning opportunity is a chance for a personal breakthrough. We are the world's lifelong learning company. For us, learning isn't just what we do. It's who we are. To learn more: We are Pearson.

Pearson is an Equal Opportunity Employer and a member of E‑Verify. Employment decisions are based on qualifications, merit and business need. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status or any other group protected by law. We actively seek qualified candidates who are protected veterans and individuals with disabilities as defined under VEVRAA and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.

If you are an individual with a disability and are unable or limited in your ability to use or access our career site as a result of your disability, you may request reasonable accommodations by emailing [e-mail].