Senior Producer, i-Ready Reading

At Curriculum Associates (CA), we believe a diverse team leads to diversity in thinking, making our products better for teachers and students. If you read this job description, feel energized by what you see here, and believe you could bring passion and commitment to the role, but you aren't sure you meet every qualification, please apply! Above all, we are looking for the right person! 
 
The Senior Producer either leads smaller-sized projects or assumes several components of a larger project, or a complex portion of a large program with minimal supervision. Senior Producers lead cross-functional teams of editors, designers and engineers to develop new instructional offerings from conceptualization through execution. The projects they lead likely require cross-product dependencies and/or development of or implementation of new processes or procedures.  

Why join this team: 

The i-Ready Reading team has a passion for helping students become stronger readers through research-based instruction and by thinking creatively about how to engage students in reading in a digital environment. If you love thinking outside of the box and collaborating with educators, curriculum developers, designers and engineers to create engaging learning experiences for diverse student populations, then the i-Ready team will be a perfect fit! 

The impact you'll have: 

The Senior Producer will be leading the full product lifecycle for a major strand for a brand new middle school offering. The Senior Producer will lead cross-functional teams of editors, designers and engineers to develop this offering from conceptualization through execution. This is an exciting new offering that offers an opportunity to step back and define new ways of driving reading engagement and learning gains for the students who need it most.

• Product Definition: Work with Product leadership to define and document the required scope of work. Communicate scope to the project team and stakeholders clearly and completely.
• Team Management and Collaboration: Lead cross-functional team to work effectively together to define an instructional approach and activity design that achieves quality criteria and DEI goals while balancing schedule, resource capacity, and budget. Support development of healthy team dynamics. May mentor less experienced team members
• Process Improvement: Identify and implement project-specific process improvements. Identify and begin to drive program-level process improvements with increasing ownership.
• Innovation: Develop resolution to diverse and complex problems often requiring creativity. Exercise judgment in selecting methods for arriving at solutions.
• Budget Development: Able to see the big picture as well as details and identify risks at both levels in terms of quality, schedule, budget. Partner with PMO to ensure a realistic schedule is built and hold the team accountable for meeting dates.
• Market Knowledge: Be knowledgeable and conversant about trends, key issues and competitive offerings in assigned product area within instruction. Build emerging understanding of overall instruction, pain points and opportunities, and the ed-tech market.
• Field Support and Communication: Develop or coordinate the development of materials to support complex field/customer questions and requests. Proactively identify "disruption" potential of new releases and inform communication to / discussion with support teams.

Who we're looking for: 

• Track record of building successful digital learning/children's media products
• Proven ability as a Product Owner 
• Proven ability to lead both internal and external teams with excellent management skills 
• Ability to effectively lead a large team and collaborate cross-functionally with editorial, design, project management, and engineering teams 
• Strong negotiation skills and proven record of executing development plans  
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously 
• Ability to initiate, foster, maintain and manage others toward positive working relationships with all cross-functional internal teams and external vendors 
• 5 years of working experience with at least 3 years experience working with developing interactive products in a product owner or product manager capacity 
• Some experience in the education space (classroom teaching, ed tech, or other) 
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience 

We'd also love to see, though not required: 

• Master's degree in education a plus 
• Teaching experience a plus 

More about this role -  

Location: Billerica or remote 

Starting Date: ASAP 

Travel Expectations: If remote, 2-4 visits to the home office in Billerica per year; 1-2 visits to schools to get teacher and student feedback 

Compensation & Benefits: Competitive salary with great benefits including health, dental, and vision insurance, employer contributed 401K.