Lead Specialist, Product Management

Description: This role aligns to Industry Level Titles such as Principal Product Manager or Senior Product Manager.

We are hiring a product manager to own products and capabilities, within our Content Authoring Platform – critical enterprise technology, that enables content creation, assembly, and reuse at scale across Higher Education, K-12, English Language Learning, and Enterprise – serving millions of learners around the world.

You will own a focused area of the platform, partnering closely with engineering and design and supported by more senior PMs in the team. The role is hands-on and execution-oriented: most of your time will be in discovery, problem framing, and delivery with your team, while contributing to broader area-level decisions as you build context.

We embrace an SVPG-inspired Product Operating Model, empowering our product teams to solve hard customer and business problems – in ways that our customers love, yet work for our business. Product companies depend on strong products, and strong products come from strong product teams. And we recognise that product teams are only as strong as their product managers.

You are a curious, evidence-led product manager who enjoys getting close to users and creating clear problem framings – using your product sense to identify the right problems to solve. You experiment with current AI tools in your work and understand that partnership with engineering and your credibility with technology are key to your success in shipping great products. You break problems down with strong analytical instincts, you care about education, and you are at your best when learning fast inside a team that is building something that matters.

Strategy and outcomes

• Help define a clear value proposition and outcome-driven goals for your scope, traceable to the jobs your users are trying to get done.
• Plan measurement up front – leading indicators that tell you whether you are on track, lagging indicators that tell you whether you got there.
• Make trade-offs within your scope, balancing strategic bets against near-term commitments and operational needs.

Discovery and customer insight

• Build direct understanding of your users through interviews, usability sessions, and time spent observing real workflows.
• Use both generative and evaluative discovery in the right places – not just running tests on what's already been decided.
• Translate user insight and business context into a clear set of opportunities your team can act on.

Delivery and quality

• Work with engineering and design as a single team, sharing problem framing and design responsibility rather than handing over requirements.
• Create clear product artefacts – Vision, PRDs, specs, user stories, and acceptance criteria – at the right level for the team, so engineering can build without constant clarification.
• Own quality from concept to delivery – not just functional correctness, but whether the work actually ships well and meets the bar you set.

AI and technology

• Bring practical, hands-on experience with current AI tools (e.g. generative AI, prompt engineering) into your day-to-day product work.
• Identify where AI capabilities could meaningfully improve user outcomes; partner with senior PMs and closely with engineering to evaluate options pragmatically.
• Stay tech-curious beyond AI – devices, ecosystems, adjacent platform shifts – when they affect how learners experience your product.

Stakeholders and influence

• Build strong working relationships with engineering, design, data, and the stakeholders relevant to your scope.
• Communicate progress, trade-offs, and risks clearly; raise things early rather than late.
• Tell a clear product story – what problem you are solving, for whom, why it matters, how you will know it worked.

• 4-6 years of product management experience, including ownership of a defined product area or feature set.
• Demonstrated discovery skills – running interviews and usability sessions, validating problems before solutions.
• Experience working closely with engineering and design in an iterative delivery model.
• Data fluency – comfortable defining metrics, planning measurement, working with instrumentation, and reading behavioural data.
• Strong written communication – clear, structured, fit-for-purpose.
• Experience in empowered or empowered-style product teams – outcome thinking, not feature delivery.
• Hands-on familiarity with current AI tools in your own product work, with a realistic view of where they help and where they do not.

• Background in content management, authoring tools, publishing technology, or related domains.
• Experience in education technology, media, or content-intensive industries.
• Familiarity with accessibility standards (WCAG) and internationalisation.
• Practical exposure to ML or AI applications beyond generative AI – recommendation, classification, NLP, vision.
• Familiarity with structured content, content atomisation, or modular content architectures.

In the first 6 months:

• Direct understanding of users within your scope, built through your own engagement – not inherited research.
• Strong working relationships with engineering, design, data, and the customers and stakeholders relevant to your scope.
• Clear problem framing for your priority areas, agreed with senior PMs and the wider team.
• First meaningful outcomes delivered.

In the first 18 months:

• A track record of solved problems – not just shipped features – within your scope.
• Measurable improvement in the user outcomes your scope owns.
• Visible growth in scope and ownership as you take on more.

• A path into platform product management with a team that coaches as well as directs.
• A platform at an inflection point: AI, consolidation, and varied user needs all converging.
• The work shows up in the experiences of millions of learners.
• An empowered operating model with real autonomy as you grow.

Pearson is a global learning company committed to helping people make progress in their lives through learning. As we evolve from a traditional textbook publisher to a digital-first learning company, we are investing in the platforms, products, and people that will power the next generation of learning experiences. Our digital products represent the majority of our revenue, and the way we build them is changing rapidly.

Compensation at Pearson is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and specific location. As required by the California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York State, New York City, Vermont, Washington State, and Washington DC laws, the pay range for this position is as follows:    

The minimum full-time salary range is between $175,000 - $200,000.  

This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program, and information on benefits offered is here.  

Applications will be accepted through 3rd July. This window may be extended depending on business needs.