Product Manager, Service Experience Platform

Vertex Education; Headquarters (AZ); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited flexible paid time off

Comprehensive medical, dental, and vis

401(k) with 6% match

Mentoring and funds for training

Job summary

Vertex Education in the United States is seeking a Product Manager to champion the school client experience for Vertex Hub, the centralized platform through which schools engage with our services.

In this ground-floor role, you will translate stakeholder needs into a focused, data-driven roadmap and champion user experience while collaborating with service line leaders to align priorities and ship meaningful value at a sustainable pace.

Qualifications

• Proven experience taking software features from concept to launch.
• Champion end-user needs using client feedback, research, and data.
• Experience defining and implementing product development processes (intake, prioritization, backlog).
• Strong facilitation skills managing requirements and competing priorities from senior stakeholders.
• Hands-on backlog management and writing user stories in Asana or Jira.
• Fluent use of generative AI tools to accelerate product artifacts.

Responsibilities

• Translate stakeholder needs and user analytics into feature requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Develop and maintain the product roadmap and backlog, align with service lines and leadership.
• Lead sprint planning, reviews, and delivery to ensure value delivery and learning.
• Create training materials and lead change management for platform updates and vendor integrations.

Skills

Product management

User advocacy

Roadmap development

Backlog management

Stakeholder facilitation

User story writing

Generative AI tooling

Tools

Asana

Jira

Job description

Be the one who makes a difference! At Vertex Education we are a team of high achievers, courageous leaders, and passionate believers in changing lives through education. As a purpose-led education services provider, our mission is destined to benefit many and yet it starts with just one person inspired to work together with us to make a memorable and meaningful difference for our clients, schools, students, and communities.

Be the one who makes a difference—with us. We are seeking a Product Manager to champion the school client experience for our Vertex Hub—the centralized digital platform through which schools engage with our services.

In this ground-floor role, you will create clarity from ambiguity, translating diverse stakeholder needs into a focused, executable roadmap grounded in data and a relentless commitment to user experience.

Success in this role requires balancing cross-functional priorities while protecting a simple, intuitive client experience. You will work closely with service line leaders and executive stakeholders to ensure alignment, while building the delivery discipline necessary to ship meaningful value at a sustainable pace.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

• 1. Product Definition & Client Advocacy: Translate stakeholder needs, client feedback, and user analytics into clear feature requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria. Champion a user-centric approach by creating wireframes and prototypes to validate design concepts with clients and internal teams. Act as the voice of the school client, grounding prioritization decisions in user value and experience simplicity. Maintain clear product documentation, including feature specifications and process flows, ensuring a reliable source of truth.
• 2. Roadmap & Backlog Management: Develop and maintain the product roadmap, managing the intake and prioritization of feature requests from multiple service lines. Facilitate prioritization meetings with service leaders, using objective scoring models to build consensus and align the backlog with strategic goals. Manage the sprint planning process, ensuring the team has a clear and committed set of priorities and a well-groomed backlog for each development cycle. Prepare and present roadmap updates and scope change proposals to leadership, clearly articulating the rationale to secure required approvals.
• 3. Execution Discipline & Delivery Systems: Design and refine the operating system that moves ideas from request to shipped value, preventing reactive fire-drills and protecting team focus. Establish lightweight but disciplined intake, discovery, sprint, and release practices that create clarity without unnecessary bureaucracy. Lead sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives with a focus on throughput, dependency management, and continuous improvement. Break large initiatives into shippable increments that allow early value delivery and rapid learning. Leverage generative AI tools to accelerate creation of user stories, acceptance criteria, and related artifacts.
• 4. Stakeholder Communication & Change Management: Serve as the primary point of contact for internal service teams regarding platform capabilities, feature requests, and release timelines. Develop and execute communication plans for all platform updates, ensuring stakeholders are informed of progress, changes, and user impact. Partner with service leaders to create training materials and lead change management efforts that drive successful adoption of new features by internal teams. Act as the primary contact for external technology vendors and integration partners, managing relationships and technical requirements for the platform.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS & ABILITIES:

Required:

• Proven experience in a product management role, taking software features from concept to launch.
• Demonstrated ability to champion the end-user, using client feedback, user research, and data to inform product decisions.
• Experience defining and implementing product development processes, including feature intake, prioritization, and backlog management.
• Strong facilitation skills with experience managing requirements and competing priorities from multiple senior stakeholders.
• Hands-on experience managing product backlogs and writing user stories in a project management tool like Asana or Jira.
• Practical fluency using generative AI tools to accelerate the creation of product artifacts like user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to articulate the 'why' behind product decisions to a variety of audiences.

Preferred:

• Experience working on B2B software, internal tools, or client-facing service platforms.
• Direct experience leading change management initiatives to drive adoption of new software and processes with internal teams.
• Familiarity with user analytics and prototyping tools such as FullStory and Figma.
• Experience building product management practices from an early stage in a new team or startup environment.
• Experience serving as a point of contact for external technology vendors or integration partners.

Be excited to be a part of our team and grow your career with us! Be the one who enables us to positively impact over 258,000 students across multiple states while driving our growth forward so we can enrich even more lives. Be the one who helps us achieve excellence for over 226 schools that we support with academics, finance, technology, human resources, communications, marketing, facilities, construction, and food services. Be the one who is a diverse thinker, a team player, a smart risk taker, an innovator, and a difference maker by encouraging others to climb higher and reach farther to further education. Be yourself surrounded by wonderful people who care about you, value your unique skills, and lift you up. Be supported in your work by caring leaders and team members who want you to succeed. Be empowered to make a difference and climb higher and reach farther to change lives through education. Be well in all aspects of your life from your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing to your finances.

Benefits:

• Enjoy industry-leading pay, rewards, referral bonuses, with unlimited flexible paid time-off for performance.
• Be able to care for your health and your family with comprehensive medical, dental and vision benefits and invest in your future with 401(k) plans with a 6% employer match on your contributions.
• Enhance your growth and development with mentoring and money to take training classes.

Thrive in a welcoming, supportive, and inclusive environment where we treat others with fairness and respect, celebrate diversity, and elevate equality and inclusion as an equal opportunity employer.

Founded in 2007, Vertex Education is committed to changing lives through education by providing academic, business and development services to schools nationwide. At Vertex, three core values form the foundation of how we work with each other -- and our clients. These values are characteristics and qualities we offer to our clients, and to one another as colleagues on our quest to change lives through education. We offer to all projects and relationships the embodiment of these values: Innovative Minds Hungry Hearts Engaging Spirits