Director of Product, Assessment Products (Remote)

Company: Teaching Strategies, LLC
Location: Bethesda
Posted on: August 7, 2022

Job Description:

Be a Part of Our Team!Join a working family that is dedicated to the mission of the work we do!Teaching Strategies is an innovative ed-tech organization focused on connecting teachers, children, and families. As front runners in the early childhood education market, we build dynamic, top-quality digital products that integrate all of the essential elements of a high-quality solution: curriculum, assessment, professional development, and family engagement.The Company, headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, is the leader in the Early Childhood Education (ECE) sector, providing the most widely used developmental assessment and curriculum system in the US, serving children from birth through 3rd grade. Recently, Teaching Strategies launched a first-of-its-kind integrated digital curriculum, assessment and family communications solution to support traditional and remote learning environments and is experiencing significant growth.The Early Childhood Education sector has been one of the fastest growing segments of the Education market over the past few years. With bi-partisan support, increasing funding streams and an increasing understanding of the positive impact that whole child development can have on academic and life success, the sector is expected to expand significantly in the public and private sectors in the coming years worldwide.In addition to the very healthy market tailwinds, there are several additional reasons this opportunity is compelling:There are few sectors where the intersection of for-profit and for-good combine so powerfully. The opportunity to create down-stream lasting effect on human outcomes is profound: 80% of the human brain is formed by the age of 3 and providing high-quality developmental experiences from birth to age 5 has an outsized effect on what happens in school and in life. There is no way to move the needle on human opportunity more drastically than improving the quality and availability of effective early childhood learning.The early childhood space is a step or two behind has not yet benefited from the powerful advances seen in similar other industries such as healthcare in which the application of powerful data, recommendation engines, dashboards, and interactive tools has significantly increased the speed and precision of diagnosis, remediation, and interaction between practitioner and "patient." Early childhood education is one of the few last frontiers in which the powerful use of data and insights have not yet elevated work streams and efficacy.There is no other company in the market with the reach, reputation, mission-orientation, balance sheet, and financial sponsors to make the kind of significant new headway over the next 3-5 years as Teaching Strategies. Teaching Strategies is on pace to build a powerful digital SaaS platform that more seamlessly connects the 5 pillars of its designed solution to maximize child outcomes: curriculum, assessment, family engagement, child-facing tech, and professional development.The Director Assess will be well-positioned to push this agenda forward. With the investment dollars and culture to support explosive growth, this individual will contribute significantly to Teaching Strategies impact and revenue goals.The OpportunityBased anywhere in the U.S. and reporting directly to the VP of Product, the Director of Assessment Products will be an integral member of the product team and a core driver of the company's transition to a digital SaaS company. You will be responsible for creating functionality and digital services for our Assess pillar of products and services, including our flagship assessment product, Teaching Strategies GOLD. Working in close collaboration with our Teacher workflow and research teams, you will also lead the research-based, psychometric, data driven aspects that are integral to the validity and integrity of our Assessment product. You will also be responsible for understanding and capturing the needs of administrators in addition to teachers and translating those needs into articulate and value-adding requirements with our technology team. Lastly, you will need to understand our larger well enough to make short and long-term trade-offs across different products and have a solid understanding of our Teach and Engage pillars to support this work.Success in this role will require this individual to have a proclivity for building strong partnerships with multiple cross-functional stakeholders including, but not limited to, other product managers, systems analysts, software developers, and UX/UI designers to drive the development, testing, rollout and evolution of Teaching Strategies continued growth as a digital SaaS company.Responsibilities

• Defines and drives the digital product strategy and roadmap for our core GOLD digital assessment products and supporting services while partnering with the VP, Education and other Product leads to ensure the daily workflow needs of the teacher is well supported and aligned to her teaching activities.Serves as the voice of the admin for all assessment-related tools in partnership with Platform team
• Ensures all assessments developed or acquired by Teaching Strategies satisfy the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing.Stays abreast of evolving market and customer needs through primary and secondary product research and data-driven analysis to guide product strategy and roadmap decisions Partners with product leadership and cross-functional stakeholders to develop a vision, strategy and prioritized feature backlog to inform the product roadmap Ensures cohesion across all product lines by compellingly communicating ideas to a wide range of key stakeholders including the development teams, the product and business teams, and the broader organizationPartners with a cross-functional "pod" of UX / design, technology, and other subject-matter experts to take ideas from concept to launchEngages in customer research and discovery to validate new product concepts and maintain strong empathy for customer and end-user jobs-to-be-doneEstablishes and tracks product KPIs across the Assess product pillarEnsures the customer experience is represented as a top priority throughout all stages of the software development lifecyclePartners with customer support and partner success teams to serve as a go-to-resource for prioritizing strategic feedback and engaging in continuous discoveryPartners with delivery managers and engineering leadership to ensure a manageable scope that can be delivered on-time, on-budget, on-quality Oversees the iterative care and feeding of the GOLD product, ensure all features and functionality receive attention, including technical debt and infrastructure as well as new featuresLeads the ideation and implementation of new features from ideation to launchFunctions as a bridge across disciplines, including Product, Engineering, Customer Success, Sales, and MarketingExperience / Skills
  7+ years of relevant experience with early education assessment products and related content is required10+ years of relevant product management work experience designing and delivering digital software / SaaS products in cross-functional teamsThe ability to thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative, agile environmentAble to produce results independently as well as collaboratively in a cross-functional teamExperience working side-by-side with software developers and a solid understanding of the agile SDLCAn understanding of psychometric models, particularly IRT/Rasch models, and knowledge of CAT is a plusExperience using a cultural and equity lens in early education assessment practices is a plusA passion for early childhood education is a plus-but if you don't already have it you will within one day of understanding what's at stake and how much you can make a differenceAbility to step back and see the whole ecosystem and provide solutions that better the entire user flow not only the featureAn advanced degree in early childhood education or educational measurement is a plusA future at Teaching Strategies includes:

  • The chance to work with a passionate and highly functional team of leaders who are opening doors to lifelong learning and opportunity
  • The opportunity to consolidate a fragmented market working closely with PE ownership
  • The opportunity to drive aggressive growth and impact in a company...and to be compensated accordingly
  • The flexibility to live anywhere in the United States
  • The opportunity to wake up in the morning feeling really good about what you do for a livingTeaching Strategies offers our employees a robust suite of benefits and other perks which include:
    Competitive compensation packageEmployee equity programRobust benefits package including 401k with employer match (includes coverage for spouses, domestic partners and children)Professional development and growth opportunitiesTuition assistance100% paid life, short and long term disability insuranceVoluntary life and critical illness insuranceUnlimited paid time off (which includes paid holidays and Winter Break)Paid parental leave programsTeaching Strategies, LLC is committed to creating a diverse workplace and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer of Minorities, all Genders, Protected Veterans, and Individuals with Disabilities.Teaching Strategies, LLC is an equal opportunity employer of Minorities, Females, Protected Veterans and Individuals with Disabilities

Keywords: Teaching Strategies, LLC, Bethesda , Director of Product, Assessment Products (Remote), Executive , Bethesda, Maryland