Director of Product Management

Ellevation

Ellevation

Product
Boston, MA, USA
Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2023
Over the last 10 years, Ellevation Education has built a thriving business serving the administrators, teachers, and specialists who support English Learners (ELL) at public schools across the US. Today, over 1,500 school districts use our software to manage their EL programs. We are a successful, rapidly growing business with a real mission—helping ELLs achieve their highest aspirations.
We are currently making a series of major investments in how our Flagship product supports the needs of our customers and their EL programs: we are developing deeper sophistication around the types of information we capture and make available to customers, re-imagining the ways our customers can collect and share information about their students and program, and evaluating a number of ways to extend our platform to solve more problems for our core user - the English Learning Administrator.
As the Director of Product on our Flagship product you will play a key role in positioning our platform as a key driver of growth for the business over the next 5 years.
Doing this requires excellence across a hands-on approach to Product Strategy, Discovery, and Delivery across multiple teams. You will create clarity by identifying which are the key problems to solve and what obstacles we need to overcome. You will guide teams through exploring the solution space to determine the right approach. And you will drive the pace and quality of decisions across multiple teams to ensure product solutions drive real impact for our customers.
You will also be responsible for growing the overall capacity of the Flagship Product organization. This includes building scorecards for key roles, recruiting and onboarding great people, and offering coaching and guidance to ensure your direct reports can reach their full potential.
At Ellevation, Product is responsible for working cross-functionally across the organization to ensure the work of your team has an impact on our customers. This involves influencing others and creating opportunities for others to plug in to your work and ensuring stakeholders understand what you are doing, why you are doing it, and that you have factored their ideas and/or concerns into that thinking.
Product Culture
We are organized into small product teams that focus on key problems to solve in the context of their specific domain. We focus on outcomes over output. Our teams are empowered to research, prototype, and gather feedback from users -- both internal and external -- to validate hypotheses. We engage users early and rapidly iterate so that the end result is a high-confidence, high-value product. We aim to foster an environment where we have the runway to experiment and learn from failure while tackling tricky challenges.
Our teams are cross-functional in that they are made up of members of Product (Product Manager, UX Designer) and members of Engineering (Tech Lead, Engineers). Product and Engineering work hand-in-hand together—we call ourselves DevPro, and in fact, we rarely meet in isolation.
Clear vision and strong strategy are core principles within the Product organization. We value product managers who fully own the long-term vision—knowing where we are going and importantly why it matters for our customers. As strategy is meant to evolve, you will need to constantly identify increments, spot and mitigate risks, and position your team to meet the needs of the business on the way there.
We celebrate being accountable to outcomes, which means signing up to pursue that vision by knocking down obstacles that get in the way. This looks like conducting experiments which throw off learnings, adjusting strategy based on those learnings, and delivering products to end-users that change behavior and drive real value for the business.

Within 1 month, you will:

  • Build a clear picture of the key challenges and strategic contexts facing Ellevation with a particular eye on our Flagship Product and key in-progress initiatives.
  • Understand Ellevation’s approach to People Leadership.
  • Develop rapport with key direct reports, peers, and key stakeholders.

Within 3 months, you will:

  • Begin to shape and drive strategic decisions within the Flagship domain.
  • Work alongside engineering and design to set strategy, guide discovery, and drive delivery.
  • Understand Ellevation’s approach to recruiting.
  • Establish influential, high-trust relationships across the organization with other Directors.

Within 6 months, you will:

  • Ensure teams are delivering high-impact business results across Flagship.
  • Set recruiting strategy for Flagship.
  • Work with Flagship Leadership to drive multi-year approach to Growth.
  • Continue to grow influence across the organization.

Within 12 months, you will:

  • Take full ownership over the domain.
  • Drive key outcomes against our business goals and support the transformation of our Flagship Product to ensure Ellevation is in a position to build towards our 5 year goals of serving 70% of the EL’s nationwide.

About you:

  • You have 10+ years of experience in Product Management
  • You have 5+ years of experience managing Product Managers
  • You have experience working on a Platform SaaS product
  • You are a natural leader and are able to inspire and influence others without authority
  • You are experimental and curious; you love to test ideas, learn quickly, fail fast, and iterate
  • You demonstrate an eagerness to learn from others
About Us:
At Ellevation, we develop world-class software to help educators serve the fastest growing population of K-12 students: English Learners (ELs). Ellevation helps school districts transform their Multilingual Learner programs and ensure all students can achieve their highest aspirations. Our product suite includes a best-in-class data and instructional planning platform, resources to build teacher capacity, and student-facing programs to teach academic language.
We are a fast-growing, mission-driven technology company partnering with over 1,500 school districts and more than 2 million current and former English Learners. Over the next five years, we plan to double the number of ELs we serve and drive measurable outcomes for students. Ellevation merged with Curriculum Associates in 2021 to accelerate impact for Multilingual Learners. Our company continues to operate independently and is well-capitalized to support our ambitious social and financial objectives.
Why Ellevation?
In addition to our great benefits and competitive salaries, here are some things that make us unique:
+ Mission-driven organization where team members are empowered to make a significant impact
+ Opportunities to join DEIB-focused groups and support building a culture of belonging
+ Professional development and growth opportunities
+ Company and team offsites in various cities across the United States
+ Collaborative workspace in the heart of Boston - a stone's throw from many central T stops (Downtown Crossing, Government Center, and Aquarium). Free snacks, beverages, and local organic fruit provided
+ Remote and in-person engagement opportunities, including happy hours, themed events, and competitions
+ Remote and in-person wellness programming to support team’s mental and physical wellbeing
Learn more about our team in our Culture Deck.
Here at Ellevation, we champion diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging. We strive to build a team that reflects the diverse communities we serve. We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace that promotes and values a range of ideas and opinions.
We believe in building a culture where productivity can flourish, one that is empathetic, respectful, and inclusive. We are proud to have been recognized in prior years as “Best Tech Workplace for Diversity” by the Timmy Awards for investing in training around inclusive behaviors, microaggressions, unconscious bias, and fostering a culture of continuous learning and feedback across the company. We are encouraged by our progress, but there’s more work to be done.
Benefits – Benefits eligible employees (and qualifying dependents) are covered by medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurance. Employees can enroll in our company's 401(k) retirement plan and receive an employer match up to 50% on the first 7% of your contribution, with pre-tax and Roth options. Employees have access to flexible paid time off for vacations, sick and disability policy, additional 10 paid company holidays, 2 floating holidays and a winter office closure between Christmas and New Year's. In addition, we provide a generous parental leave benefit, back-up childcare or eldercare, and a variety of other perks to support the health and well-being of our employees.
Additional Information: Ellevation operates under Curriculum Associates, LLC, an Equal Opportunity Employer. Curriculum Associates, LLC will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, genetic information, or any other category protected by law. Curriculum Associates, LLC will grant employment, without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, genetic information, or any other category protected by law. Such action shall include, but not be limited to, the following: employment, upgrading, demotion, transfer, recruitment or recruitment advertising, layoff or termination, rates of pay or other forms of compensation.
Our company uses E-Verify to confirm the employment eligibility of all newly hired employees. To learn more about E-Verify, including your rights and responsibilities, please visit www.uscis.gov/e-verify.
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