Advanced Specialist, Product Management

Advanced Specialist, Product Management

Descriptor:  This role aligns to industry level titles such as Senior Product Manager.

Job Description 

ABOUT PEARSON 

At Pearson, we believe the capacity for growth lies in all of us—the potential to learn, to stretch, to constantly better ourselves. We create innovative and accessible assessment products and services that foster personal and professional growth. We are looking for a passionate and skilled expert individual contributor Product Manager to join our team and drive the development of cutting-edge assessment products.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As an Advanced Specialist in Product Management, you will own and shape product direction for assigned product areas within Pearson Professional Assessments, with particular focus on exam authoring, item banking, test assembly, and publishing capabilities.

You will define and execute product strategy by translating customer, stakeholder, market, regulatory, and business needs into a clear product vision, roadmap priorities, and actionable backlog decisions for agile delivery teams. You will lead product discovery across author, reviewer, approver, psychometrician, and exam-builder workflows, balancing customer value, business outcomes, operational realities, technical feasibility, compliance expectations, and product viability to drive enhancements and new capabilities. You will also identify and shape innovative opportunities, including the responsible use of generative AI and other emerging technologies, to improve authoring efficiency, support new assessment approaches, and streamline workflows while maintaining human review, governance, security, assessment integrity, and the quality and defensibility required in high-stakes assessment.

The Advanced Specialist in Product Management must contribute to their product team a solid knowledge of the various constraints of the business such as from marketing, sales, support, finance, legal and privacy.  The product manager must also contribute a deep knowledge of our users and customers, and data about how our customers engage with our products. Finally, the product manager is expected to track industry trends and the competitive landscape as they pertain to their product.

This job, as with the other roles on the product team, is an individual contributor role.  You will need to be able to influence your teammates, as well as colleagues, stakeholders, and key executives, through your use of data and logic with strong communication skills translating complex concepts in easy-to-understand ways.

ABOUT YOU

You are a curious, evidence-led product manager who enjoys getting close to users and creating clear problem framings – using your product sense to identify the right problems to solve. You experiment with current AI tools in your work and understand that partnership with engineering and your credibility with technology are key to your success in shipping great products. You break problems down with strong analytical instincts, you care about helping people better themselves, and you are at your best when learning fast inside a team that is building something that matters.

While each member of the product team may be accountable for a specific risk, we look for product managers that understand that consistent innovation is the result of each member of the product team contributing their passion and their ideas.  The product manager must collaborate closely with their product designer and engineers to discover effective solutions and then work together to deliver those solutions to market.

While we empower our product teams to figure out the best solutions to the problems that need to be solved, we also hold those teams accountable for the results.  Shipping is necessary, but not sufficient.  We look for product managers that are not afraid of signing up for results, even when this means they have to work through others to achieve the necessary results.

 

WHAT YOU’LL WORK ON 

Strategy and outcomes

• Help define a clear value proposition and outcome-driven goals for your scope, traceable to the jobs your users are trying to get done.
• Plan measurement up front – leading indicators that tell you whether you are on track, lagging indicators that tell you whether you got there.
• Make trade-offs within your scope, balancing strategic bets against near-term commitments and operational needs.

Discovery and customer insight

• Build direct understanding of your users through interviews, usability sessions, and time spent observing real workflows.
• Use both generative and evaluative discovery in the right places – not just running tests on what's already been decided.
• Translate user insight and business context into a clear set of opportunities your team can act on.

Delivery and quality

• Work with engineering and design as a single team, sharing problem framing and design responsibility rather than handing over requirements.
• Create clear product artefacts – Vision, PRDs, specs, user stories, and acceptance criteria – at the right level for the team, so engineering can build without constant clarification.
• Own quality from concept to delivery – not just functional correctness, but whether the work actually ships well and meets the bar you set.

AI and technology

• Bring practical, hands-on experience with current AI tools (e.g. generative AI, prompt engineering) into your day-to-day product work.
• Identify where AI capabilities could meaningfully improve user outcomes; partner with senior PMs and closely with engineering to evaluate options pragmatically.
• Stay tech-curious beyond AI – devices, ecosystems, adjacent platform shifts – when they affect how learners experience your product.

Stakeholders and influence

• Build strong working relationships with engineering, design, data, and the stakeholders relevant to your scope.
• Communicate progress, trade-offs, and risks clearly; raise things early rather than late.
• Tell a clear product story – what problem you are solving, for whom, why it matters, how you will know it worked.
  
   

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

In the first 6 months:

• Direct understanding of users within your scope, built through your own engagement – not inherited research.
• Strong working relationships with engineering, design, data, and the customers and stakeholders relevant to your scope.
• Clear problem framing for your priority areas, agreed with senior PMs and the wider team.
• First meaningful outcomes delivered.

In the first 18 months:

• A track record of solved problems – not just shipped features – within your scope.
• Measurable improvement in the user outcomes your scope owns.
• Visible growth in scope and ownership as you take on more.
  
   

WHY THIS MATTERS

• A path into platform product management with a team that coaches as well as directs.
• An industry at an inflection point: AI, consolidation, and regulation converging.
• The work shows up in the experiences of millions of test takers.
• A genuinely complex domain — psychometrics, security, accessibility, and delivery infrastructure
  
   

NECESSARY QUALIFICATIONS 

• Proven track record as an individual contributor product manager, leading critical, technically complex product initiatives from strategy through release with measurable customer, operational, and business outcomes. 

• Strong discovery skills — running interviews and usability sessions, and validating problems before committing to solutions. 

• Hands-on familiarity with AI-assisted workflows or emerging technologies in your own product work, particularly in environments requiring strong governance, human review, quality controls, and responsible product design to support accurate, secure, and defensible outcomes. 

• Experience working closely with engineering and design in an iterative delivery model, with an outcome-driven approach rather than a feature-delivery mindset. 

• Demonstrated success driving cross-functional alignment, marshaling resources across teams to overcome obstacles and deliver coherent, impactful outcomes. 

• Ability to navigate ambiguity, make informed tradeoffs, and escalate critical risks when appropriate. 

• Highly analytical and data-informed, with experience defining metrics, planning measurement, and translating usage and performance signals into clear product direction and prioritization. 

• Proven ability to solve complex problems with many constraints, and to translate customer and business needs into clearly documented requirements and functional solutions — articulated through well-structured written narratives grounded in data and sound judgment.

• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to condense complex technical concepts into clear, non-technical language for diverse stakeholder audiences. 

• Track record of shipping features that align with original requirements, with minimal post-release corrections or escalations.
  
   

BONUS EXPERIENCE

• Background in computer-based testing, certification, licensure, education technology, or other regulated or high-stakes environments — especially with authoring, item banking, test development, publishing, or related content lifecycle workflows.

• Experience in education technology, media, or content-intensive industries.

• Familiarity with accessibility standards (WCAG) and internationalization, especially in the context of global or diverse test-taker populations. 

• Familiarity with structured content, content atomization, or modular content architectures.