Services Product Manager

The Products team is currently looking for highly motivated people to join the team. In this role you will be responsible for the full life cycle of customer driven projects, from requirement gathering and design all the way to delivering the solution to the customer.  Your contribution directly impacts an institution’s ability to revolutionize the role that technology plays in education. 

ESSENTIAL DUTIES and RESPONSIBILITIES:

Vision Development

• Lead vision development process in cooperation with services leadership.
• Analyze underlying financials to understand profitability;
• Research and document market landscape and trends,
• Benchmark ANGEL service products against competition.
• Lead customer focus group/survey efforts to capture voice of customer.
• Lead internal sales focus group to determine perceived position.
• Lead internal services focus group to determine perceived position and market opportunities.
• Prepare a vision based on market demand and perceived opportunity.
• Develop business cases to support vision in coop with svc leadership.

Product Planning

• Vision milestone plan:  produce plan appropriate for exec (vision to dev plan).
• Develop service product specifications per software spec guideline.
• Establish customer working groups/survey process and lead evaluation process.
• Lead revision to services product vision and spec.
• With services leadership, translate specification into development plans.
• Ensure realism--dev plan matches resource plans.
• Document plan appropriate for Plan Milestone.

Execution

• Develop in coordination with service leadership key milestone level plans.
• Combine plans into single service-product-plan matched to release
• Develop models for development process informed by historical record.
• Represent services products as representative of G2M team
• Prepare status reporting appropriate for services and products leadership.
• Continue customer involvement via working groups to confirm.
• Ensure execution of plan in coordination with services leadership.

Marketing and Sales Support 

• Perform as Chief Evangelist for our services products in the market.
• Develop product positioning and story into draft marketing deck form.
• Deliver fact level SME ownership of all sales tools & collateral.
• Develop “What’s New” communications deck for all services product.
• Develop sales meeting preparation materials (preview deck).
• Develop PR concepts for national and regional PR campaigns.
• Develop and deliver AUC presentations on services products.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE and SKILLS:

Education and Training  

• A bachelor’s degree is required, and an MBA or related experience is a significant benefit.  
• Direct experience in an enterprise software position and or online education industry is the most important training for this role. 
• Strong candidates will have 5+ years of software industry experience in a product development discipline with significant leadership responsibilities (product management, program management, or product marketing). 
• A successful candidate will have a strong history of market driven product success and innovating new offerings. 
• Experience in a services product (e.g. consulting, hosting, and training) is a significant benefit in performing the role though is not formally required.

Specialized Knowledge and Skills: 

• Direct experience across a range of functions across the software development lifecycle and the project vocabulary and roles within them is required, and experience with agile methodologies in particular is a plus. 
• Experience in software rollout to market and related project planning is extremely valuable. 
• Specific experience is supporting or delivering key software services including documentation, support, implementation planning and customer configuration management are of direct value in this position. 
• Similarly, experience in managing release criteria and communications with internal teams such as sales and marketing is of high value.

Position Requirements:

Organization Skills

• Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail.
• Must have positive history & experience in organizing volumes of information and data.
• Specific competencies with dependency modeling and reporting are required.

Software Packaging Domain Experience

• Strong experience with hosted and packaged software deliverables.
• Significant experience one model and basic knowledge of the other is a minimum requirement.

Software Development Lifecycle Experience

• Experience in traditional waterfall methods of software development is valuable.
• Managing projects using modern methods such as rapid prototyping, agile or scrum is a significant benefit.

Post Development Release Coordination & Organizational Experience

• Experience in released to market software a must.
• Significant experience in working with non-development personnel and process is required.
• Positive work history in coordination with sales, marketing and service functions within an organization.
• Specific experiences with these functional areas a plus:  documentation, user education, application hosting, technical consulting, and/or program consulting.

Communication & Arbitration Skills

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, ranging from technical communication status to executive communication regarding progress against schedule and associated project risks.
• Experience arbitrating resource issues, scope, content, and schedule is a must and personal references will be required.

Alpha/Beta/Pre-Release Candidate Program Experience

• Ability to achieve appropriate coordination with customers and the change management cycle will be important.
• Experience in developing these programs and coordinating customer feedback is highly valuable.

Project Budgeting and Reporting

• Significant experience with budgeting and resource modeling in required – project accounting rather than financial accounting.
• Ability to capture and present progress information is crucial to the role.
• Mastery level reporting skills for project status and actual vs. plan performance is required.
• Experience in risk identification and reporting is an important addition.

The position is based in our Indianapolis headquarters. If our collaborative, energetic environment is a fit for you, we want to hear from you. Please email your resume to jobs@angellearning.com.