Principal Product Manager, Candova

Study.com; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Study.com is seeking an AI-native product leader to build Candova.ai from 0→1 and beyond from our Mountain View, CA office. This hybrid role involves shaping product vision, steering the roadmap, and coordinating with executives to land a scalable AI-native training platform for small and mid-sized businesses.

You will prototype in days, validate pricing, and define metrics for activation, retention, and growth while partnering with marketing, BD, and Sales to accelerate market adoption.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of product management experience, with senior leadership exposure.
• Demonstrated success building AI-driven product experiences and hands-on AI prototyping.
• Ability to rapidly shape product vision in ambiguous spaces and justify decisions.
• Experience building for small and mid-sized business buyers and enterprise adoption is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Find product-market fit by shaping the Candova product vision and end-to-end roadmap.
• Build with AI by prototyping features, wiring agents, and evaluating models.
• Prototype, experiment, and grow by running continuous experiments across acquisition, onboarding, and activation.
• Collaborate with marketing, BD, and Sales to drive growth and align product strategy with business goals.
• Lead the Candova team day to day, coordinating with engineers, designers, and senior leadership.

Skills

Product management

AI-powered products

Senior leadership

Prototyping with AI

Market discovery

Job description

Our mission is to open the door to the life-changing impact of education. We build market-leading, online college credit and test-preparation solutions that help working adults earn their degrees, advance their careers, and achieve economic mobility. Recognized by Fast Company and GSV 150 as one of the world’s most innovative education companies, we are also at the forefront of AI-first learning, combining artificial intelligence with the latest learning science to improve access and outcomes at scale.

Our product is our impact. Through our Keys to College and Keys to the Classroom initiatives, we have saved students over $700 million in tuition and enabled hundreds of thousands of learners to pursue and succeed in careers across nursing, teaching, counseling, business, and other high-demand fields. We are deeply focused on measurable outcomes and building products that create meaningful, lasting change in people’s lives.

About the Role

We’re looking for an AI-native product leader to build Candova.ai from 0→1 and beyond.

Candova is our new AI-skill development product. Instead of teaching people about AI in the abstract, Cando, Candova’s voice‑led AI trainer, coaches them through real work in their own tools. Companies are buying AI faster than their teams can learn to use it, and we believe whoever closes that gap owns a large, fast-moving market. Candova is a new product with the opportunity to create the product surface, the product roadmap, the pricing, and the best audience fit are all still being decided. You will drive those decisions.

This is a hands‑on role for someone who builds with AI, and is passionate about solving the hard problems a new product and market present. You will collaborate regularly with executive company leadership to develop this vision into a successful new product. You’ll prototype in a couple days what most teams spend a month specifying. Your customer is small and mid‑sized businesses trying to make their teams AI-native. Individual professionals upskilling on their own are a secondary audience to grow into once the business motion is working.

This role is based in our Mountain View, CA office and is hybrid in office Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

What You’ll Do

Find product-market fit

• Help shape the Candova product vision, and drive it into what actually gets built.
• Drive the Candova product strategy, roadmap end to end, and product execution from first prototype to a business with repeatable growth.
• Get in front of users and buyers every week, and turn what you hear into shipped product changes in weeks, not quarters.
• Validate pricing, packaging, and positioning for the business motion, and identify the entry point that converts best inside a company, in partnership with marketing, BD and Sales.
• Define the metrics that tell you whether Candova is working: activation, task completion, demonstrated skill, retention, and expansion. Use them to double down or kill fast.
• Understand the competitive landscape: AI-skills platforms, YouTube, webinars, training offered by the LLM providers, and in‑house enablement programs. Identify where we can win and who nobody is serving well yet.

Build with AI, at the limit

• Build with AI yourself: prototype features, generate and test content, wire up agents, and evaluate models.
• Push the boundary on what an AI‑powered product can do: agentic workflows, personalized coaching, automated evaluation and grading, measurable skill proficiency. Be equally clear‑eyed about where the technology isn’t ready.
• Solve for curriculum that stays current as the tools shift underneath it. The major LLMs ship new capabilities every few weeks, which makes staying current an AI generation problem, not just a content one.
• Treat AI quality as a measurement problem. Design the evaluation layer alongside the feature so we actually know whether Cando is good.
• Set the expectation that AI accelerates everything the team does: research, analysis, spec writing, QA, and communication. Raise the bar on how the team works, not just what it ships.

Prototype, experiment, and grow

• Put prototypes in front of real customers to settle open questions. Prefer a working thing with five users over a deck with fifty slides.
• Run a continuous experiment program across acquisition, onboarding, and activation.
• Support the BD and Sales team as they drive the growth of new and existing accounts: seat expansion, manager buy‑in, and renewal.
• Partner with marketing, content, and partnerships teams to bring candova.ai to market and find the right audience for good product/market fit.
• Go deep on product analytics: segmentation, cohort analysis, LTV modeling, and A/B testing.
• Lead the Candova team day to day, working with a small group of engineers and designers, and partner closely with senior company leadership who are engaged in this product directly.

What You’ll Bring To The Role

• 8+ years of product management experience, with at least 3-5 years in a senior Product, Principal, GM, or business-owner role.
• Exceptional product sense. Given an early, ambiguous space, you consistently pick the right next thing to build, and can explain why.
• Demonstrated success building AI‑powered product experiences, plus hands‑on fluency using AI in your own daily work to prototype, analyze, research, debug, and communicate. Vibe‑coding experience preferred.
• A 0→1 track record, or a history of driving major product transformations: you’ve taken something from nothing (or from stalled to thriving) and you’re comfortable with how uncomfortable that is.
• Experience building for business buyers, ideally small and mid‑sized companies, with a working understanding of how a team rollout differs from an individual signup.
• Ability to operate at both the strategic level (market sizing, business cases, roadmap) and the execution level (prototyping, writing specs, reviewing data, unblocking teams).
• Experience building voice‑first product experiences is a strong plus. Ed‑tech or workforce‑learning experience is a plus as well.

The salary range for this position is $160,000 - $190,000 per year. Pay is dependent upon factors including skills, work experience, business needs and market demands.

At Study.com, we know that strong communities are built on the power of our diversity, and we respect and strive to understand for the diverse identities, race, ethnicities, backgrounds, and perspectives of our team members. Our work and company culture have been consistently recognized, including:

• Inc. Best Place to Work
• Fortune Great Places to Work – Best Workplaces in the Bay Area
• Golden Bridge Awards – Gold Winner, Corporate Social Responsibility
• San Francisco Business Times & Silicon Valley Business Journal – Best Places to Work

Study.com provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, veteran or disability status. In addition to federal law requirements.

Study.com complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. Additionally, qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered for the position in accordance with applicable state and local laws.