Deputy Director, CaliforniaColleges.edu Educator Experience
Deputy Director, CaliforniaColleges.edu Educator Experience
California, Remote
Posted: 5/5/2023
The California College Guidance Initiative (CCGI) is looking for a product manager professional to lead the day-to-day operations of the Educator Experience team that provides product requirements that define how tools on CaliforniaColleges.edu function for a diverse group of users utilizing CaliforniaColleges.edu with K-12 students, conducts quality assurance testing to ensure tools function as designed, and manage CaliforniaColleges.edu’s vendor-based development lead.
CCGI streamlines the college planning and application process for California students and helps colleges access the information they need to inform key decisions about admission, first-year academic placement, financial aid, advising, and supportive services. The Deputy Director, CaliforniaColleges.edu Educator Experience will use their content knowledge, skills, and experience to guide strategic problem solving and coach their direct report and other team members in a fast-paced and constantly evolving environment.
The ideal candidate is a collaborative leader who has a knack for problem-solving and details, knowledge of educator needs, and ability to lead a team in building and testing new features. They should have knowledge and/or interest in supporting the needs of students, educators, and parents and familiarity with the needs of K-12 educators. To be successful in this role, you must be able to collaborate with other subject matter experts on a project-management basis.
We work to solve large scale, system-level problems. You must be comfortable working with unknowns and ambiguous solutions, as well as passionate about promoting public education and advancing educational equity. This role reports to the Director, Educator Experience.
What Will You Be Doing?
- Oversee the day-to-day development of CaliforniaColleges.edu to ensure educators have the reports, lessons, and account management tools to successfully make data-driven decisions for students.
- Be the Educator Experience Team Lead at the daily meeting to monitor progress on feature development and ensure the platform is maintained, including management of development.
- Develop and support a data-driven culture on the Educator Experience division by using processes that include a focus on continuous improvement.
- Develop and maintain an understanding of the educator users of CaliforniaColleges.edu.
- Regularly engage in ongoing learning opportunities to maintain strong knowledge of CaliforniaColleges.edu, its competitors, and the college and career space.
- Write detailed requirement and specification documents to describe new features and adjust existing ones; follow thorough quality assurance testing processes and document all findings.
- Model giving and receiving feedback via a non-violent communication model to improve team performance and work product.
What Technical Skills Do You Need?
- At least 4 years product management experience.
- At least 2 years of experience coaching and managing the work of a small team.
- Experience investigating, troubleshooting, and documenting user issues and functionality.
- Experience writing specification and requirements documentation that thoroughly outline new and existing features.
- Familiarity with conducting and documenting thorough quality assurance testing for multiple features at a time.
- Ability to gather, analyze, synthesize, and present both quantitative and qualitative information effectively.
- Experience with Salesforce preferred, or similar Customer Relationship Management tool.
- Bachelor’s degree required.
What Intangibles Do You Need?
- Strong decision-making skills and collaborative spirit, with the ability to take abstract brainstorming and generate concrete proposals for action.
- Advance projects without detailed supervision, balancing multiple responsibilities and providing colleagues with actionable proposals for advancing collective efforts.
- Commitment to coaching and mentoring a team by providing and receiving direct feedback, modeling vulnerability, and leading with professionalism and kindness.
- Thrive in a fast-paced environment with changing priorities and deadlines.
- Juggle multiple projects of various scopes with ease and grace.
- Meticulous attention to detail.
- Excellent verbal communication skills and the ability to communicate with various levels of professionals.
More About the Educator Experience Team
The team is composed of individuals, working remotely across California, that support daily functionality of CaliforniaColleges.edu as part of the CaliforniaColleges.edu Division. This Division works daily with a vendor to enhance and develop features on CaliforniaColleges.edu, our platform. This Division also works closely with the Student Experience Division to develop and manage features. The team believes in continuous learning, are deeply self-motivated, and have a personal connection to the organizational mission around student equity. Those who thrive here exhibit a growth mindset, are interested in improving and/or building their skill sets and are willing to take initiative to learn more.
More About CCGI
The California College Guidance Initiative (CCGI) works to ensure that all 6th-12th grade students in California have access to a systematic baseline of guidance and support as they plan, prepare, and pay for postsecondary education and training.
This baseline is provided by CaliforniaColleges.edu, which provides California students and educators with a wide range of college and career planning information and tools. The site also houses, audits, and transmits student data to help ensure more accurate and efficient decisions regarding admissions, financial aid, and course placement. CCGI provides technical assistance, support, and training to K-12 school districts in order to support students, counselors, and parents with the systematic use of CaliforniaColleges.edu, including its transcript-informed tools.
CCGI serves nearly 50% of California students, and we are slated to scale statewide in the coming years through the California Cradle-to-Career Data System.
CCGI is a positive, diverse, and supportive culture. At our core, we prioritize the needs of students above all else. Everyone at CCGI works remotely from home offices. We are all located in various parts of California and make use of tools, such as ZOOM, Slack, and Salesforce, to communicate and document our work. While some people regularly travel locally and/or statewide for required business meetings, we only occasionally conduct internal meetings in person.
CCGI is housed at the Foundation for California Community Colleges but is an autonomous initiative with its own mission, goals, and executive leadership team.
The Foundation for California Community Colleges is committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities (EEO) are available to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, genetic characteristics, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital/parental status, political affiliation, religion, age, disability, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or veteran status. In addition to federal law requirements, the Foundation for California Community Colleges complies with applicable state and local laws governing non-discrimination in employment.