Manager, CaliforniaColleges.edu Educator Experience (Associate Product Manager)
Manager, CaliforniaColleges.edu Educator Experience (Associate Product Manager)
California, Remote
Posted: 8/22/2023
The Manager, CaliforniaColleges.edu, Educator Experience is responsible for writing product requirements that define how tools on CaliforniaColleges.edu function for Educators across California. There is a strong component of Product Management in this role, which reports to the Sr. Manager, and you will draft technical specification documents, conduct robust quality assurance testing to ensure tools function as designed, and will collaborate directly with the members of the CaliforniaColleges.edu Division to ensure accuracy, effectiveness, alignment, and clarity. Experience in K12 education, EdTech, and/or college and career counseling is a plus.
We work to solve large scale, system-level problems. As CaliforniaColleges.edu is adopted by more and more school districts across California, our workload continues to grow, and Managers play an important role on the team, using their content knowledge, technical and communication skills, and experience to contribute to strategic problem solving and scaling efforts across the state. The role includes researching and defining product requirements based on defined protocols, writing specifications for features on CaliforniaColleges.edu, conducting quality assurance tests, tracking feature development, and collaborating across divisions to enhance products. Investigating and addressing platform bugs, ensuring a cohesive end-user experience, supporting feature roll-outs, researching Educator needs, and being a strategic partner are key components of the role. Active participation in meetings, handling special projects, and embodying CCGI’s values are expected. The position requires you to develop a comprehensive understanding of the platform, collaborative skills, and proactive engagement in advancing CaliforniaColleges.edu’s goals.
What Will You Be Doing?
- Research and define product requirements, in accordance with our protocols and best practices.
- Write product specifications to support the coding of features on CaliforniaColleges.edu.
- Plan, conduct, refine, and log quality assurance testing to ensure proper functionality of features.
- Track and document feature development according to our norms.
- Collaborate across Divisions to advance product enhancements and feature requests from ideation to production.
- Investigate bugs and test, retest, and re-retest until bugs are squashed.
- Actively participate in CaliforniaColleges.edu Division meetings.
- Other special projects as assigned by the Sr. Manager, including annual updating of CEEB codes, CDS codes, and other CDE- and Education-related codes, tables, and information.
What Technical Skills Do You Need?
Candidates need not possess all of the following, but the more you possess, the stronger your application will be. We are willing to train the right candidate on any missing technical skills.
- JIRA, or similar technical ticketing systems
- Technical specification writing
- Quality Assurance (QA) testing/bug tracking
- Clear, succinct instruction writing or requirements writing for developers or coders.
- Product Management
- Project Management
- Experience with Salesforce preferred, or similar Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool.
What Intangibles Do You Need?
- An interest in, and commitment to, issues of educational access, equity, and excellence for all students.
- Ability to model, provide, and receive feedback using the Nonviolent Communication model, or a willingness to learn and use it.
- Meticulous attention to the smallest details, while maintaining an understanding of the bigger issues – the why of what we do.
- Patience as bugs, features, and enhancements make their way through our processes.
- Enough vulnerability, humility, and self-confidence to let your team know if you don’t know or understand something; a willingness to speak up about your needs.
- Commitment to developing and maintaining trusting professional relationships.
- Information- and answer-seeking orientation.
- A positive, collaborative attitude that manifests as a willingness to edit the work of others and have your own work edited, across multiple revisions, all in the service of making the best product possible.
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 salary range for this position is $65,000 to $95,000 annually.
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.