Advanced Specialist, Product Management

Pearson is a company that creates innovative and accessible assessment products and services. They are seeking an Advanced Specialist in Product Management to drive the development of cutting-edge assessment products, define product strategy, and lead product discovery efforts while balancing customer value, business outcomes, and technical feasibility.

Responsibilities:

• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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

Requirements:

• Proven track record as an individual contributor product manager, leading critical, technically complex product initiatives from strategy through release with measurable customer, operational, and business outcomes
• Strong discovery skills — running interviews and usability sessions, and validating problems before committing to solutions
• Hands-on familiarity with AI-assisted workflows or emerging technologies in your own product work, particularly in environments requiring strong governance, human review, quality controls, and responsible product design to support accurate, secure, and defensible outcomes
• Experience working closely with engineering and design in an iterative delivery model, with an outcome-driven approach rather than a feature-delivery mindset
• Demonstrated success driving cross-functional alignment, marshaling resources across teams to overcome obstacles and deliver coherent, impactful outcomes
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, make informed tradeoffs, and escalate critical risks when appropriate
• Highly analytical and data-informed, with experience defining metrics, planning measurement, and translating usage and performance signals into clear product direction and prioritization
• Proven ability to solve complex problems with many constraints, and to translate customer and business needs into clearly documented requirements and functional solutions — articulated through well-structured written narratives grounded in data and sound judgment
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to condense complex technical concepts into clear, non-technical language for diverse stakeholder audiences
• Track record of shipping features that align with original requirements, with minimal post-release corrections or escalations
• Background in computer-based testing, certification, licensure, education technology, or other regulated or high-stakes environments — especially with authoring, item banking, test development, publishing, or related content lifecycle workflows
• Experience in education technology, media, or content-intensive industries
• Familiarity with accessibility standards (WCAG) and internationalization, especially in the context of global or diverse test-taker populations
• Familiarity with structured content, content atomization, or modular content architectures