Product Manager

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Co; Orlando (FL); On-site; USD 70,000 - 87,000; Full time

Job summary

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt seeks a Product Manager to define market problems and drive customer success in the Science Core line. You’ll lead growth, lifecycle management, and collaboration with editorial and tech teams for differentiated offerings.

You will develop business cases, support launches, and conduct market research to inform strategy. Strong communication and leadership are essential for working with stakeholders across the organization.

Qualifications

• 3-4 years of related industry or functional experience in Educational Technology or Product Management.
• Superior verbal and written communication skills; superior presentation skills.
• Superior inter-personal skills with all levels including senior management.
• Demonstrated conceptual and analytical thinking, leadership and decision-making.

Responsibilities

• Define key market problems to solve to drive customer success and product-market fit.
• Lead planning for the Science Core product line with emphasis on growth and lifecycle management.
• Guide editorial and technology development of differentiated products.
• Create business cases, support product launches, and competitive selling.
• Monitor market trends, perform market research, and report insights to stakeholders.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure alignment across strategy, development, and marketing.

Skills

Educational Technology

Product Management

Communication skills

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's in Education

Job description

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The Product Manager is a vital resource within the company and is responsible for defining key market problems to solve to drive customer success, achieve product-market fit, and deliver on business goals. The Core K-12 Science Product Manager leads part of the Science Core product line with an emphasis on strategic growth/profitability, iterative product enhancement, and life cycle management.Primary responsibilities include product line planning; guiding editorial and technology development of superior, differentiated product; advocating customer/sales needs in the product development process; guiding market research activities; and taking a portfolio view of life cycle management.

Additional responsibilities include participating in creation of business cases, product launch and maintenance activities, and competitive selling support.

• Help identify new market and growth opportunities and develop solutions through business case process. Conduct ongoing market intelligence activities that yield develop deep customer insights and "job-to-be-done" to support new opportunity identification and business case development.
• Manage product planning and development activities for a solution in collaboration with product development teams
• Create market and business requirements for new solutions that satisfy customer needs and revenue/profit goals.
• Recommend and maintain partnerships and affiliations to enhance marketability of products/product line
• Make recommendations for revisions of and extensions for existing solutions, including product customization, new components, and pricing models.
• Research and report information about market trends, competitive issues and products, customer issues, and sales force needs to stakeholders as directed.
• Anticipate, monitor, and respond to competitive issues. Implement the development of strategic competitive information
• Set goals for market research activities. Implement efficacy studies, user studies, and pilots

Business Strategy:

• Perform objective analysis of potential market opportunities to provide a basis for investment, articulating market learnings and quantifying the risk, including a financial model.
• Establish a pricing model, schedules, guidelines and procedures.
• Determine the most effective way to deliver a complete solution to an identified market problem. Where you have gaps in your offering, analyze whether to buy, build or partner to complete the solution for your market.
• Monitor and analyze key performance indicators to determine how well the product is performing in the market, how it impacts the company operations, and ultimately, how it contributes to profit.

Product Life Cycle Management:

• Analyze financial performance of an assigned product, including investment, revenue, and profitability
• Analyze and evaluate market performance and product positioning of an assigned product
• Benchmark performance of an assigned product against competition and market; implement pricing plans in line with product strategy
• Implement tasks in the product launch and sunset process
• Implement product maintenance plans and manage the phases and gates in the product life cycle

Planning:

• Position the product by its ability to solve market problems.
• Create internal positioning documents that will be used to develop external messages focused on each key buyer or persona.
• Define the archetypical users of your products or services through user personas.
• Articulate and prioritize personas and their problems through requirements so that the appropriate products can be built.
• Build an effective relationship and team between PM&S and development
• Serve as a checkpoint along the way to provide context and clarification to development
• Illustrate market problems in a “story” that puts the problem in context. Use scenarios are one component of requirements.
• Manage proactive communications with relevant stakeholders from strategy through execution.

Launch and Support

• Work with Product Marketing on go-to-market strategy for new product or solution.
• Partner with Sr. Director to identify product positioning strategies. Partner with Product Marketing and Sales to ensure proper competitive positioning for product or solution.
• Serve as product expert across the HMH organization
• Provide support for the sales and services enablement process

Communication & Supervision:

• Maintain strong, ongoing channels of communication with Learning Experience Design, Technical Product Management, Content Delivery, and other internal departments.
• Lead cross-functional teams to execute processes and plans.

What You Need to be Successful

• 3 - 4 years of related industry or functional experience in Educational Technology or Product Management
• Bachelor’s in Education or related discipline.
• Superior verbal and written communication skills; superior presentation skills
• Superior inter-personal skills with all levels including senior management
• Demonstrated conceptual & analytical thinking; vision; leadership & management; prioritization; collaboration; decision-making; negotiation; problem-solving; tactical execution; product & market knowledge

Nice to Have

• 2 years of experience working in an agile development
• Experience in an entrepreneurial or start-up environment
• Experience in product management
• Demonstrated strong leadership skills

How We Work (Competencies)

• Values Differences
• Learns Nimbly
• Drives Results

Benefits and Salary Range:

Salary Range: $69,600- $87,000. Our salary ranges are based on national averages. We have wide ranges so we can be flexible and determine compensation based on a number of factors including the candidate’s skills, experience, education and location.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (NASDAQ:HMHC) is a global learning company dedicated to changing people’s lives by fostering passionate, curious learners. As a leading provider of pre-K–12 education content, services, and cutting-edge technology solutions across a variety of media, HMH enables learning in a changing landscape. HMH is uniquely positioned to create engaging and effective educational content and experiences from early childhood to beyond the classroom. HMH serves more than 50 million students in over 150 countries worldwide, while its award-winning children’s books, novels, non-fiction, and reference titles are enjoyed by readers throughout the world.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is an equal employment opportunity employer and participates in E-Verify. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, or other protected group status.

Nearest Major Market: Orlando

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