Job Description

Packback is seeking a Data Product Manager to join our passionate Product team, to support our mission to help every student follow their curiosity and discover their unique voice.

Packback’s A.I.-powered platform is used by educators in K-12 and higher education to help their students fall in love with the subject matter, drive personalized learning, and most importantly, quantify and improve student critical thinking skills.

As a Data Product Manager at Packback, you will be the product manager of our Data team and will be responsible for prioritizing the backlog and roadmap for our data team (in collaboration with engineering and product leadership), performing user research to understand the needs of both our team and our customers, and use SQL to build the final data “products” (in the form of dashboards and reports) for our internal team and our customers. 

As an education company, our ability to demonstrate the impact of our platform to our partners is critical, as is our ability to internally understand how our platform is being used by students and educators. In this role, you’ll be responsible not only for the “delivery” of data products, but for championing a culture of “fearless curiosity”, experimentation, and data-driven decision-making in our organization. 

Please note, for this role, exceptional SQL skills are a requirement. 

Key job duties include:

• Prioritizing the work of our data team on our company roadmap, with consultation from the Director of Product Design and the CPO

• Overseeing the progress and timeline of all projects on the Data roadmap 

• User research (internal and external stakeholders) to understand how stakeholders goals related to Packback’s data, the questions they are trying to answer with data, and how to make data tools most useful and effective for them 

• Building the “end product” of our data team’s work to internal and external customers in the form dashboards (in a tool called Lightdash)

• Support the “end-to-end” rollout of data products, including training, change management, and documentation

• Internal and external communication for feature releases and bug fixes

• Supporting in a client-facing capacity on large scale data analysis projects, helping to communicate research goals, timelines, and interfacing with key contacts on the client side to collect the data we need for outcome analysis

• Monitoring the performance of team-wide product KPIs to help support data-driven decision making on all teams

• Building a culture of curiosity, experimentation, and analysis in our organization 

Why You Should Work at Packback

Reach - Our platform, Packback Questions, is used by more than 1.5 million students and 10 thousand educators, who collectively author more than 10 million posts a year.  You will be a part of building a platform that has a huge impact on inspiring curiosity in students.

Training - We offer opportunities for learning and mentorship. We value people who like to wear many hats. You can get involved with the front end, back end, infrastructure and data functions.

Ownership - Packback is a rapidly growing company. You will have responsibility for bringing innovative features to market while working closely with the product team.

Want to learn more about engineering at Packback? Check out our docs repo on Github.

Requirements

We’re looking for somebody who is independent, self-motivated and eager to grow Packback’s capabilities.

• Demonstrated expertise and proficiency in SQL is a firm requirement 

• 4+ years of experience of experience working as a product manager

• Experience with data analysis and data visualization

• Experience with building highly usable dashboarding tools that help users achieve their goals and take action (not just presenting data)

• Interest and experience with collecting user requirements from internal stakeholders and prioritizing internal requests, alongside an existing project roadmap

• Effective prioritization skills 

• Exceptional written communication and verbal presentation skills

• Comfort collaborating with team members of a variety of specialities (UX design, marketing, engineering, account management) and acting as the central coordinator to keep all parties and stakeholders working towards a common goal

• Demonstrated experience with user research

• Statistical analysis experience is a plus, but is not required

• Willingness to travel to the office for quarterly company retreats and possible customer site visits for on-site research and observation

  • While this is a remote position and travel is not a frequent requirement, you will be asked to come to the office approximately 1X quarterly

Our commitment to diversity

Working in the Education Technology space, it is an ethical necessity for us to build a diverse and inclusive team in order to better consider the needs of our audience’s wide range of backgrounds and educational experiences. We provide regular training on topics of diversity, equity, and inclusion to all employees.

We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Perks of working at Packback

A culture that you can be proud to build: We work hard at building an inclusive culture of curiosity and continuous learning at Packback. In any role at Packback, being a good steward of our values and using them to inform decisions and communication can make an enormous impact on the business.

Work-life balance: Packback offers an unlimited vacation policy. Team members are encouraged to take time off for volunteer opportunities. Our engineering team is fully remote, and provides flexibility and support for working wherever makes the most sense for you.

Competitive Salary and Benefits: The salary range for this position is $97K - 107K annually + bonus. We set clear expectations for professional growth and offer an annual learning and development stipend.

Benefits

• Remote position with an experienced distributed team

  • All employees are expected to be present in the office for quarterly retreats

  • Travel to the office is covered for non-Chicago-based employees, plus daily stipend for meals and travel

• Health & Wellness

  • Medical Insurance

  • Dental Insurance

  • Vision Insurance 

  • 401(k) with a 50% employer match

  • Stock options

  • Disability Insurance

  • Life Insurance

  • Commuter Benefits

  • Generous Parental Leave up to 12 weeks

  • Family Medical Leave

  • Flexible “unlimited” Vacation policy with a minimum of 10 days off required, plus over 10 additional days of scheduled company closures outside of paid Federal holidays each year

  • “Momentum Maintenance Fridays” - Once per month, Packback has a scheduled Friday office closure to create a 3-day weekend. Team members use this time for doctor’s appointments, travel, personal care, and professional development. 

• Additional Perks:

• Stipend for learning and development 

• Access to premium membership to One Medical

• Calm subscription

• Doordash “Dashpash”