This is a regular full-time exempt position reporting to the Sr. Vice President of Marketing and Product Management.
Position Summary
The Director of Instruction will be the leader for Scientific Learning's award-winning family of products and ongoing K-12 product roadmap. She/he will provide strategic direction and ongoing support to product development, sales, service and marketing on Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant products as well as the new product pipeline. She/he will serve as one leader in the critical triumvirate of Instruction, Science and Usability for all new product offerings and services.
Detailed Responsibilities
- Define, develop and drive product vision, strategy and metrics for K-12 product portfolio
- Ability to balance pedagogical requirements , a brain plasticity approach to learning and product ease-of-use to maximize the greatest learner outcome
- Act as product evangelist for K-12 product portfolio both internally (sales, services and development teams) and externally (press, analysts and customers)
- Develop and own the business case to justify all new product introductions and significant feature enhancements.
- Own all product pricing, configuration and channel decisions
- Maintain overall product and feature roadmap, managing prioritization and tradeoffs to meet growth objectives for business
- Act as the "voice of the customer" across all internal discussions and decisions that impact assigned product areas.
- Stay current with market trends and competitive insights and keep company informed on key issues
- Own entire product launch process and lead cross-functional team consisting of marketing, development, operations, sales/support to bring products to market
- Provide direction on customer instructional needs across Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant products and related materials in coordination with the Chief Education Officer
- Remain up to date on Reading research, trends in reading instruction and student academic performance needs
- Source and produce content for products and services
- Collaborate on product implementation strategies
- Collaborate with marketing teams, product review teams, and other sales support groups to improve customer product use
- Collaborate and provide support on Company product training
- Travel requirements are 20%
Requirements
- Former administrator in a public school district, responsible for curriculum or instruction
- Outstanding, dynamic presentation skills
- Excellent written and verbal communications skills
- Thorough understanding of curriculum standards and their impact on K-12 instruction
- Experience in sales and marketing to educational institutions desirable
- Master's Degree required, PHD desirable
- At least 8 years of product management experience in content software development (educational software/K-12 is a distinct advantage)
- Ability to lead the creation and definition of innovative product and customer experience concepts including effectively collaborating with multiple functions & key stakeholders (marketing, product development, operations, customer support, implementation, sales, customers, partners etc) to ensure product requirements are captured and approved with all stakeholders.
- Strong business acumen
- An understanding of contemporary requirements gathering and management practices: elicitation, analysis, specification, verification. The ability to apply them in practice; familiarity with requirements gathering processes and tools
- An understanding of how to practice requirements management according to several software development life cycles in an agile development environment
- Strong analytical and interpersonal skills
- Excellent facilitation, listening and negotiation skills
- Proven ability to define and measure metrics for product success and make decisions based off metrics
- Proven track record of managing and launching innovative products and features
Please send your cover letter and resume, Attention: Human Resources Department, to resumes@scilearn.com or fax 510.874.1877.
Please no phone calls!
We are located near the 12th Street Downtown Oakland BART station. See map and directions.