Principal, Product Management

Pearson is an education and learning technology company serving learners, educators, and institutions. The Principal, Product Management role will lead the evolution of higher education assessment products for an AI-enabled environment while supporting the existing customer base. The role owns product strategy, discovery, delivery, AI capabilities, measurement, and cross-functional stakeholder alignment.

Responsibilities:

• Define and maintain a clear vision, value proposition, and roadmap for your area, grounded in user insight, business priorities, and platform strategy
• Set outcome-driven goals (OKRs or equivalent) with leading and lagging indicators planned up front – measurement is part of the design, not an afterthought
• Make deliberate trade-offs between competing user needs, GTM needs, and platform-wide concerns
• Contribute to platform-level strategy, bringing your area into broader roadmap discussions and shaping coherent cross-area decisions
• Build first-hand understanding of your users – their jobs-to-be-done, pain points, and the contexts in which they work – through regular direct engagement
• Run continuous discovery using : customer interviews, usability testing, behavioural analysis, and rapid prototyping
• Develop empathy for indirect users too – the learners, educators, and administrators who experience the downstream products your platform powers
• Be the resident expert in the competitive space for your assigned assessment experience
• Lead build/buy/partner analysis to help Pearson HE decide where to invest development dollars and where to partner to fast-track solutions
• Work with engineering and design as a single team, sharing problem framing and solution design rather than handing over requirements
• This is a legacy org in rapid transformation – we need PM’s that act as ‘player coaches’, contributing to building the team – sharing what you learn, mentoring peers, helping raise the bar
• Write clear product artefacts – PRDs, specs, capability definitions, user stories – at the right level for the team, so engineering can build without constant clarification
• Manage scope and sequencing thoughtfully, balancing strategic bets against near-term commitments and operational needs
• Engage credibly with engineering on architecture, API design, and technical trade-offs relevant to your area
• Identify and evaluate relevant AI capabilities in a pragmatic way – generative AI, prompt engineering, ML-assisted workflows, intelligent content tools – impact vs feasibility
• Become the resident expert in how instructors and students are using AI in their classrooms, and how Pearson HE assessments should react
• Build strong working relationships with engineering, design, data, content, and GTM partners; operate effectively in a matrix without direct authority
• Communicate strategy, progress, and trade-offs clearly to senior stakeholders; surface risks and decisions early
• Tell a clear product story – what problem you are solving, for whom, why it matters, and what 'good' looks like – so the team and your stakeholders move in the same direction

Requirements:

• 6+ years of product management experience, with a track record of owning a product or area end-to-end – from discovery through to measurable outcomes
• Strong discovery skills; ability to translate insight into product decisions
• Experience with B2B2C products serving multiple user types, ideally including both user-facing applications and developer-facing services
• Technical acumen – comfortable on architecture and API discussions, and able to make informed trade-offs without needing every detail explained
• Data fluency – defines metrics, plans measurement, works with instrumentation, uses quantitative signals alongside qualitative insight
• Hands-on experience with current AI tools in your own product work, with a clear view of when AI is and is not the right tool
• Strong written and verbal communication – clear opportunity assessments, user stories, and strategic framing that gives teams real direction
• Stakeholder management in complex organisations – competing priorities, influence without authority, trust-building across functions
• Background in educational technology
• Practical experience with AI/ML product development beyond generative AI – classification, recommendation, NLP, vision
• Experience with modernizing a software while maintaining the existing user base