Job Description

Packback is seeking a Product Manager to oversee our strategic product partnership relationships and assist our Product leadership team on high-impact strategic projects.  

This Product Manager will focus on developing the unique product experiences in the Packback platform to support our strategic content partnerships. Packback has established several deep strategic partnerships with leading content and curriculum providers, with many more partnerships in the late stages of development. These partnerships bring together the Packback platform with the curriculum from our partners in a way that leads to a new “product offering” to our educators and students, and we want each partnership to manage with the same thoughtfulness and care as any new feature of our platform. 

In this role, you will oversee the product development of “content-driven products, including course templates, training materials, supplemental resources, guides, and overseeing the implementation and processes that allow us to integrate with our partners. While this role is not intended to initially directly manage a team of engineers, you will instead oversee content writers and trainers to ensure that the entire customer experience with Packback from end-to-end is clear, inspiring, and valuable, especially when an educator is using Packback alongside one of our content/curriculum partners. 

As with any of our Product Managers, you should expect to work on a variety of projects including projects which both involve managing engineers, and others which do not involve technical features (including content projects, developing processes, overseeing projects for internal efficiency). 

In this role, you will collaborate regularly with the team members who oversee the development of new partnership relationships on the go-to-market team and be a valued strategic voice in our executive planning around future partnerships. 

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.

Key job duties include:

• Project Coordination and Leadership for strategic projects

• Cross-team coordination and project management across our GTM teams, rev-ops teams, data analysis 

• Developing product guidelines for our content partnerships, including content guidelines for co-branded content products

• Recruiting and project managing expert curriculum writers, and developing content standards 

• Developing guides, supplemental materials, training guides, etc. to build the “whole product solution” in our platform for different audiences (educators, partner company, institutions)

• Market research to surface new partnership opportunities, market trends, curriculum trends, and state assessment/state standards

• Overseeing the entire customer journey, including the Packback marketing site, training materials, trainings, and help center, to ensure a successful user journey from “discovery” to “active usage”

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.

• 4+ years of experience in Product Management and/or Product Design

• Excellent leadership, project management, and coordination skills

• Ability to represent the company in external strategic meetings with Partners

• Passionate about building exceptional educational experiences in K12 and Higher Education, and an eagerness to develop curriculum, content, and supportive materials which set educators up to have an exceptional experience on the Packback platform

• Product-led growth experience and knowledge of optimizing user journeys with a variety of entry points to a product 

• Demonstrated experience leading the product design and management of large scale projects with ‘high impact’ outcomes

• Experience in a range of user research methods and development of effective research plans 

• 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

• Direct experience in the classroom as former educator, curriculum writer, or ID is strongly preferred

• 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 125k-135k 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”