Fast Facts

HMH is seeking a Sr. Director of Product Management to lead the Performance Suite portfolio, focusing on market strategy, integrated leadership, and driving product success in the K–12 educational technology sector.

Responsibilities: Key responsibilities include developing market strategies based on customer insights, managing product lifecycle and portfolio, driving go-to-market initiatives, and collaborating across various internal teams to ensure product success.

Skills: Ideal candidates should have at least 10 years of experience in K12 educational technology, strong leadership skills, expertise in lean-agile methodologies, and superior communication abilities.

Qualifications: An MBA or Masters in a relevant field is preferred, along with certification in the Pragmatic Marketing Framework and experience in entrepreneurial or start-up environments.

Location: USA

Compensation: $140000 - $165000 / Annually

HMH is a learning technology company committed to delivering connected solutions that engage learners, empower educators and improve student outcomes. As a leading provider of K–12 core curriculum, supplemental and intervention solutions, and professional learning services, HMH partners with educators and school districts to uncover solutions that unlock students’ potential and extend teachers’ capabilities.

HMH serves more than 50 million students and 4 million educators in 150 countries. For more information, visit www.hmhco.com

Role Summary:

The Sr. Director of Product Management & Strategy for Performance Suite leads as the strategist, P&L manager, and spokesperson for the HMH Performance Suite portfolio. The Sr. Director, PM&S drives full lifecycle strategy, implementation, and market success of HMH Performance Suite, including product creation, product roadmap, pricing and offerings, overall business case and, go-to-market strategy. This position drives an integrated leadership team across multiple lines of business to define requirements for integrated product development efforts across Core, NWEA, Platform and Services. This role also leads collaboration with Sales, Finance, Revenue Operations, Global Operations, Marketing, and other internal groups to drive customer success and achieve business goals. The Sr. Director role reports to the SVP Product Management & Strategy of Core Solutions to coordinate closely on all decisions, actions, and development plans that impact the Performance Suite portfolio.

Primary Responsibilities:

Market Strategy:

• Discover problems in the market by interviewing customers, recent evaluators and untapped, potential customers. Validate urgent problems to show their pervasiveness in the market using lean-agile methodologies.

• Evaluate product-market fit for the portfolio on an ongoing basis, using data-driven analysis to conduct win/loss analysis and understand the buying process.

• Articulate and leverage the organization’s unique abilities to deliver value to the market.

• Identify competitive and alternative offerings in the market and assess their strengths and weaknesses.

• Develop a strategy for winning against the competition.

• Inventory HMH assets (technical, skills, services, patents, other) and determine ways that they can be leveraged.

Focus Strategy:

• Map needs with target markets and analyze the market segments to actively pursue.

• Ensure that the targeted segments are large enough to support the current and future business of the product.

• Determine which channels best align with your markets’ buying preferences.

• Integrate products into a coherent portfolio of products focused on the market. Manage the portfolio like a “product” (business plan, positioning, buying process, market requirements and marketing plan).

Business Strategy:

• Perform objective analysis of potential market opportunities to provide a basis for investment, articulating market learnings and quantifying the risk, including a financial model.

• Establish a pricing model, schedules, guidelines and procedures.

• Determine the most effective way to deliver a complete solution to an identified market problem. Where you have gaps in your offering, analyze whether to buy, build or partner to complete the solution for your market.

• Monitor and analyze key performance indicators to determine how well the product is performing in the market, how it impacts the company operations, and ultimately, how it contributes to profit.

• Focus your teams’ creative spirit on solving market problems by leveraging your organization’s distinctive competencies.

Integrated Leadership, Planning & Communication:

• Drive an integrated leadership team across multiple lines of business to define requirements for integrated product development efforts across Core, NWEA, Platform and Services.

• Nurture robust relationships with stakeholders, serving as a vital connector between the product team, executives, customers, and internal teams. Their role encompasses aligning the product vision, delivering progress updates, and effectively addressing concerns and feedback from all stakeholders.

• Maintain strong, ongoing channels of communication with Sales, Marketing, Learning Experience Design, Technical Product Management, Content Delivery, and other internal departments.

• Position the product by its ability to solve market problems.

• Create internal positioning documents that will be used to develop external messages focused on each key buyer or persona.

• Define the archetypical users of your products or services through user personas.

• Articulate and prioritize personas and their problems through requirements so that the appropriate products can be built.

• Illustrate market problems in a "story" that puts the problem in context. Use scenarios are one component of requirements.

• Manage proactive communications with relevant stakeholders from strategy through execution.

• Supervise and guide a Product Manager for Performance Suite. Review and assess staff through key evaluation points per year.

Launch and Support:

• Lead the development of company-wide go-to-market plans, working with all departments and key stakeholders to execute and measure the effectiveness of strategic launches.

• Collaborate with Product Marketing on go-to-market strategy and launch activities.

• Work with cross-functional stakeholders to ensure products are meeting market needs, socialize product vision, strategy, and planning outcomes.

• Serve as a product expert for internal and external stakeholders

• Provide needed market and solution information to support the operations group.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's Degree

• At least 10 years of experience in K12 educational technology with managerial experience

• Experience using lean-agile and design thinking methodologies to develop and launch products

• Demonstrated strong leadership skills

• Superior verbal and written communication skills; superior presentation skills

• Superior inter-personal skills with all levels including executive management

• Demonstrated conceptual & analytical thinking; vision; leadership & management; prioritization; collaboration; decision-making; negotiation; problem-solving; tactical execution; product & market knowledge.

Nice to have:

• MBA or Masters --preferably in the content area or in business management or marketing

• Pragmatic Marketing Framework certification desired

• Experience in an entrepreneurial or start-up environment

Salary Range: 

$140,000 - 165,000

HMH is fully committed to Equal Employment Opportunity and to attracting, retaining, developing and promoting the most qualified employees without regard to race, gender, color, religion, sexual orientation, family status, marital status, pregnancy, gender identity, ethnic/national origin, ancestry, age, disability, military status, genetic predisposition, citizenship status, status as a disabled veteran, recently separated veteran, Armed Forces service medal veteran, other covered veteran, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. We are dedicated to providing a work environment free from discrimination and harassment, and where employees are treated with respect and dignity. We actively participate in E-Verify.