Product Operations Manager

About PeopleGrove

PeopleGrove is a B2B SaaS company focused on higher education alumni engagement and career outcomes. We partner with colleges and universities to help their communities connect, grow, and thrive - through two product lines: CORE (ELMS, CompMS, MyCred, Readiness, Recruit) and HUBS (Engagement Hub, Experience Hub, PathwayU). We're a remote-first team that moves fast, builds with purpose, and cares deeply about the institutions and students we serve.

The Opportunity

We're building a Product Operations function from the ground up, and this is the person who builds it.

PeopleGrove is at an inflection point. Our product and engineering teams are executing well, but the operating system that connects what we build to the rest of the company - Sales, Customer Success, Support, and Marketing - needs an owner. Release process, internal readiness, cross-functional coordination, and data hygiene are all areas where we know we can do better, and where doing better will directly accelerate growth.

This role reports directly to the VP of Product and has cross-company scope from day one. You won't be maintaining a process someone else built - you'll be designing and enforcing it.

Why This Role, Why Now

Release process dysfunction is one of the most visible and solvable problems on our roadmap right now. The person who fixes it will have direct, measurable impact on Sales trust, CS readiness, and product team effectiveness - and will help build a function that scales with the company. This is a high-visibility role at a company that's growing intentionally and investing in the infrastructure to do it well.

What You'll Own

Release Process & Internal Readiness

• Own the end-to-end release process: calendar, release notes, stakeholder communications, and enforcement.

• Ensure every release is accompanied by internal readiness across CS, Support, and Sales before anything ships

• Define and hold the standard for what "ready to release" means at PeopleGrove, and build scalable processes from the ground up to support that. You are not just maintaining quality, you are defining it.

This includes but is not limited to:

• Coordinating and running a monthly New & Next meeting to review new and upcoming releases

• Managing bi-weekly product releases, including attending bi-weekly release lock in and communicating upcoming releases to stakeholders

• Coordinating release notes production across product managers and ensuring consistent quality

Cross-Functional GTM Coordination

• Serve as the connective tissue between Product, Engineering, Customer Success, Sales, Support, and Marketing for every release cycle

• Partner closely with the AVP of Product Marketing and Solutions Engineer on internal-to-external handoffs

• Own cross-functional working rhythms: release meetings, RACI maintenance, and process documentation

This includes but is not limited to:

• Managing GTM logistics, including attending cross-functional working groups pre-launch for large releases

• Defining set of GTM materials based on release tier, and ensuring execution across team

Product Team Operating Rhythms

• Establish and maintain the processes, templates, and tools that help the product team operate consistently and at high quality

• Own Jira hygiene, sprint health, and reporting cadence.

• Support quarterly planning rhythms and cross-team alignment rituals

This includes but is not limited to:

• Maintaining jira roadmap boards, catching outdated or inconsistent tickets, and tracking progress toward goals

• Identify and escalate at risk and missed deadlines

• Plan, schedule, and run quarterly roadmap planning sessions

Data Hygiene & Reporting

• Build and maintain the data and reporting infrastructure that gives the product team clear signal on product quality, delivery, and outcomes

• Define and track key product health metrics in partnership with Engineering and Analytics

This includes but is not limited to:

• Review Mixpanel events and implement consistent naming conventions and standardize prompts for querying data

• Set up and report out on data dashboards for product KPIs and goals

What We're Looking For

Must-haves

• 5-8+ years of experience in product operations, program management, or a senior product role at a B2B SaaS company

• Has built or significantly improved a release process in a cross-functional environment - knows what "good" looks like and how to get there

• Comfortable holding people accountable across teams without being adversarial - can follow up, push back, and enforce standards while keeping relationships intact

• Strong working knowledge of standard B2B SaaS tools: Jira, Confluence, and similar

• Finds genuine satisfaction in making systems work well - not looking to own a product roadmap, but to make the whole team more effective

Strong differentiators

• Experience standing up a Product Ops function from scratch

• Has operated at or alongside Director level with cross-company scope

• Familiarity with higher education, edtech, or similarly mission-driven SaaS environments

What This Is Not

This is not a coordinator role. It's not a project manager role. It's not a support function for a single product team. This person will walk into any team in the company, represent product's operating standards, and be taken seriously. They need to have done this before - or something close enough that the ramp is short.