Senior Lead, Product Management - Content Authoring Platform

Pearson is a global learning company committed to helping people make progress in their lives through learning. They are seeking an experienced Product leader to own the vision, strategy, and roadmap for their Content Authoring Platform, which enables content creators to build educational content for millions of learners worldwide.

Responsibilities:

• Define and articulate a compelling product vision for the Content Authoring Platform that aligns stakeholders and guides investment decisions, in a complex B2B2C environment
• Develop and maintain platform roadmaps that balance business commitments, system consolidation initiatives, and strategic capability investments
• Establish clear strategic principles and decision frameworks that enable coherent prioritisation across a complex stakeholder landscape
• Drive decisions on build vs. buy vs. partner for core platform capabilities, including evaluation of vendor proposals and technology partnerships
• Lead platform rationalisation efforts-consolidating duplicated systems across business units while managing risk and maintaining delivery commitments
• Develop deep, nuanced understanding of platform users across multiple personas: authors, content producers, educators, instructors, community contributors, and developers/systems consuming platform services
• Drive continuous discovery practices to identify and validate problems worth solving, ensuring product decisions are grounded in user research, behavioural data, and direct engagement – developing empathy for the end customer
• Define and implement a comprehensive instrumentation strategy to capture platform usage, user behaviour, and outcome metrics, using data to inform prioritisation, validate hypotheses, measure feature impact, and identify opportunities for improvement
• Establish success metrics and KPIs tied to user value and business outcomes (e.g., content creation cycle time, author productivity, content reuse rates, API adoption), while building data fluency across product teams - ensuring PMs can access, analyse, and act on quantitative insights
• Define and evolve a responsible and impact driven AI strategy for content authoring, with business unit leaders - including generative AI for content creation, AI-assisted quality assurance, intelligent content recommendations, and adaptive content personalisation
• Navigate the rapidly evolving AI landscape-evaluating emerging capabilities, distinguishing signal from noise, and making pragmatic adoption decisions
• Evaluate and integrate AI/ML technologies, LLM partnerships, and emerging capabilities that enhance author productivity and content quality
• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing product management team aligned to platform capabilities and user segments
• Develop PM talent - coaching on discovery techniques, stakeholder management, strategic thinking, and data-driven decision-making
• Operate effectively in a matrix organisation - influencing without direct authority, building coalitions, and navigating competing priorities across business units
• Contribute to broader product capability building across the organisation, including participation in communities of practice

Requirements:

• 10+ years of product management experience, with at least 5 years leading product teams and managing product managers
• Significant experience with platform products that serve multiple customer segments, including both UI applications and developer-facing services (APIs, integrations)
• Deep user empathy and discovery skills - demonstrated ability to understand diverse user needs, validate problems, and ensure product decisions are grounded in user insight
• Strong technical acumen - ability to engage credibly with engineering on architecture decisions, API design, and technical trade-offs
• Strong data and analytics orientation - experience defining instrumentation strategies, establishing metrics frameworks, and using data to drive product decisions
• Experience in complex B2B2C enterprise environments - ideally large incumbents with legacy systems and multiple business units
• Experience with AI/ML product development, including practical understanding of how rapidly evolving AI capabilities impact user needs and product strategy
• Experience operating in empowered product team models (SVPG-style or similar) - leading through influence and outcome accountability
• Excellent stakeholder communication skills - ability to build trust with business leaders, translate technical concepts for non-technical audiences, and navigate organisational complexity
• Experience building and developing product teams - hiring, mentoring, and growing PM talent
• Background in content management systems, authoring tools, publishing technology, or related domains
• Experience in education technology, media, or content-intensive industries
• Track record of leading vendor evaluations and technology partnership decisions
• Experience with content atomisation, structured content standards, or modular content architectures
• Familiarity with accessibility standards (WCAG) and internationalisation requirements
• Experience with platform consolidation or system rationalisation programmes