Senior Technical Product Manager I

At Curriculum Associates, we believe in the potential of every child and are changing the face of education technology with award-winning learning programs like i-Ready that serve a third of the nation’s K-8 students. For more than 50 years, our commitment to making classrooms better places, serving educators, and supporting accessible learning experiences for all students has driven the continuous improvement of our innovative programs. Our team of more than 2,500 employees is composed of lifelong learners who stand behind this mission, working tirelessly to serve the educational community with world-class programs and support every day.

About the Role

As Senior Technical Technical Product Manager - I, you’ll be the anchor of our product development engine driving day-to-day execution with the technical judgment and systems perspective to see how each decision ripples across the broader platform.

This role pairs hands-on delivery ownership with real product and technical thinking. You’ll keep the backlog sharp, the team unblocked, and the product built right while assessing how changes in one system affect the products, teams, and workflows connected to it.

If you get energy from owning the details and thinking several systems ahead at the same time, this role is built for you. Bonus if you bring EdTech context and empathy for learners and educators.

What You’ll Do

As a Senior Product Manager, you’ll make execution your superpower while shaping product direction and protecting the wider ecosystem:

• Own the Backlog: Maintain a healthy, prioritized, and well-groomed backlog. Ensure stories are ready, refined, and aligned with sprint goals.
• Write User Stories & Acceptance Criteria: Translate feature requests and product ideas into clear, testable stories with robust acceptance criteria and edge cases.
• Assess Cross-System Impact: Evaluate how a change in one product, workflow, or integration could ripple across connected systems, teams, or compliance obligations and flag downstream risk before it surfaces.
• Drive Day-to-Day Execution: Lead sprint ceremonies: stand-ups, planning, retros and proactively remove blockers. Partner with the Engineering and Agile Coaches to keep momentum high.
• Align Cross-Functional Teams: Work closely with engineering, UX, and stakeholders to align goals, clarify scope, and drive decisions.
• Prioritize Under Competing Pressures: Make and defend prioritization and product trade-off decisions - scope, timeline, quality, cost across regulatory, technical, and customer demands, in partnership with cross-functional leads.
• Triage Issues and Escalate Early: Be the first to flag misalignments, tech blockers, or shifting priorities. Keep a pulse on progress and risk.
• Support Roadmap & Discovery: Contribute to roadmap discussions, customer discovery, and impact analysis.
• Engage with Users: Participate in customer interviews and UX research as needed, working with UX and Research to ensure features meet real user needs.
• Support Go-to-Market & Enablement: Contribute to go-to-market activities, internal enablement, and release documentation as required.
• Connect Execution to Outcomes: Tie daily delivery work back to broader business and student/educator outcomes.
• Champion Iterative Delivery: Ensure value ships early and often, adjusting based on user and stakeholder feedback.

What You’ll Bring

You’re hands-on, high-ownership, and wired for structured execution with the technical curiosity to understand how the pieces fit together. You have a bias for action, a passion for clarity, and comfort operating inside a complex, interconnected product ecosystem.

Key Skills & Abilities

• Systems & Ecosystem Thinking: Able to anticipate how a change in one product or workflow affects connected systems, teams, and compliance obligations - and plan around that impact before it becomes a problem.
• AI Fluency & Applied Thinking: Skilled at using AI tools in daily product work including evaluating and stress-testing potential solutions and accelerating documentation or requirements engineering with the judgment to know where AI genuinely adds value.
• Strong Execution Leadership: Proven ability to drive sprint success, align teams, and deliver quality under deadlines.
• Backlog Ownership: Comfortable managing and refining complex backlogs across multiple workstreams.
• Cross-Functional Prioritization: Skilled at making and defending prioritization trade-offs with engineering, UX, and business stakeholders, especially under competing regulatory and customer pressures.
• Competitive & Market Research: Able to research competitor products and market trends to sharpen prioritization, positioning, and roadmap decisions.
• Detail-Oriented Story Writing: Able to write stories and acceptance criteria that engineers can confidently build, test, and validate against.
• Technical Fluency: Comfortable engaging with engineering and architecture on data models, APIs, and integration points well enough to reason about downstream impact.
• Strong Communication: Clear written and verbal communication across technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Adaptability: Comfortable navigating ambiguity and shifting priorities in a dynamic product environment.
• EdTech Familiarity (Preferred): Exposure to building or working on curriculum, assessments, student/teacher platforms, or educational tools.

Tools You’ll Use

Core tools:

• Figma for design collaboration and feedback loops
• Mural or Miro for whiteboarding, retrospectives, and roadmap alignment
• Jira, Confluence & Smartsheet for backlog and knowledge management

Nice to have:

• Familiarity with product analytics tools such as Pendo, Mixpanel, or Amplitude for usage insights, and Google Analytics for behavioral and engagement data (preferred, not required).

Experience & Education

• BSc / B.Ed / B.E / MBA with 10+ years of experience as a Product Owner, Product Manager, or Business Analyst.
• Experience in agile product teams, hands-on with Jira, Confluence, and Mural; familiarity with Pendo and Google Analytics is a plus.
• Experience working across multiple interconnected systems or platforms (e.g., SIS, CRM, ERP, integrations) is a strong plus.
• Exposure to EdTech platforms or adjacent industries is a strong advantage.
• Familiarity with backlog hygiene practices and working in hybrid/remote cross-functional teams.
• Preferred: CSPO / Product Management Certificate / PSPO / PMI-ACP / CPM certification.

Ready to Join the Journey?

We’re excited to hear from you. If this sounds like the role for you, apply now and help us make classrooms better for students and teachers everywhere.

Get to Know Us

• Curriculum Associates: our journey, our values, and our leadership.
• Community Focus: our recent initiatives giving back to the communities we serve.