Vice President of Product

Organization 

The ASSISTments Foundation is a growing non-profit that spun out of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 2019. Our founders, Cristina and Neil Heffernan, are former math teachers who could never find enough time to give students feedback and analyze data to plan instruction. They developed ASSISTments, a best-in-class math practice and assessment platform, to enable K-12 math teachers to assign high quality content and to use powerful data and reporting to better meet their students’ needs. 

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ASSISTments is the most rigorously studied and proven edtech solution on the market, with the strongest impact for historically underserved students. The ASSISTments Foundation is focused on 1) scaling ASSISTments and 2) engaging in innovation and research, in partnership with the ASSISTments Lab @ WPI. We reached 90,000 students last year and are currently funded by IES and NSF to engage in cutting edge R&D with generative AI.

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Opportunity for Impact

We are seeking a talented Vice President of Product who can join our leadership team at a critical inflection point for the organization. This person will be instrumental in defining a product strategy that will take us to the next level of scale and impact. This person will manage a team of product owners and designers, turning strategy into exceptional products and features that empower educators to better help their students. They will report directly to the Executive Director, and collaborate closely with the Director of Engineering, and other department heads. The ideal candidate will be a collaborative and supportive leader, with a track record of strong execution in product development, and excited to work at a growing and evolving mission-driven non-profit. 

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Role and Responsibilities

• Product Vision and Strategy: Collaborate with organizational leadership to translate organizational strategy into a product strategy and goals.
• Roadmap Creation and Iteration: Develop and iterate on a product roadmap in alignment with product strategy, taking in key inputs (user feedback, business opportunities, market insights, engineering constraints), and effectively prioritizing and planning. Set up structures to ensure key stakeholders feel appropriately engaged and aligned on requirements and expectations. The roadmap will be transparent and accessible to all stakeholders. 
• Product Systems and Operations: Standardize processes for product planning, customer discovery, product discovery, and product development, aligned to best practices. Create systems for tracking the status of projects and timelines to support cross-functional planning.
• Team Management, Mentorship and Development: Manage a team of product owners and a designer. Ensure clearly defined roles on the team. Effectively support and grow the skills of the team to meet high expectations, as well as evolve the team structure to best meet goals. Create a culture where people feel heard and supported.
• R&D: Collaborate with the Founders to establish R&D priorities aligned to funding opportunities in research and innovation, including Generative AI-enabled features. Inform grant proposals in which product R&D is a focal point, and collaborate with leadership to balance grant-funded R&D with scale priorities.

Professional Qualifications

• You have a strong track record leading product teams and overseeing product planning and development.
• You have experience developing and evolving a product roadmap in alignment with a strategy, synthesizing multidimensional inputs to prioritize and plan, and driving improvements on priority metrics.
• You understand the value of continuous user research, and know how to synthesize the results and leverage the findings to drive product strategy and decision making.
• You have a strong commitment to quality when it comes to product design and user experience.
• You are a passionate mentor who cultivates growth mindsets and supports the professional development of your team. You have managed a team with varying levels of experience.
• You have been part of a process translating an organizational strategy into a product strategy.
• You have experience in K-12 education technology, or in adjacent areas (SaaS, B2B, educational software, healthcare, government or other highly regulated sectors). 
• You are able to discuss technical constraints and understand their impact on product development.
• You have a non-profit ethos with a business acumen around scale. 
• You have experience designing and utilizing product analytics to support data-driven decision making.
• Bonus if you understand considerations related to student data privacy and security. 
• Bonus if you are proficient in agile and scrum methodologies, and AWS.

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Personal Characteristics

• Exceptional communicator and empathetic listener. 
• Adept at prioritization. Someone who can take in a lot of inputs and perspectives and build consensus towards shared action.
• Strong collaborator and problem solver. Approaches work with humility and an interest in getting to the best possible outcome.
• Empathetic and people-centric leader, with a strong ability and desire to mentor, grow and support a team towards clear goals and a high standard. 
• Execution-oriented, with a bias towards action. 
• Strategic thinker who is able to zoom out to understand interdependencies and trade-offs, as well as zoom in and get the tactical details right.
• Flexible and adaptable, able to pivot and adjust based on the situation. Comfortable managing change and responsive to evolving organizational needs.

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Additional Info & Compensation

The salary range for this position is $190,000-$220,000. TAF offers a competitive benefits package that includes health insurance, short term disability, 401k match, 25 annual days of PTO, 12 paid holidays, and a fully remote work environment. New employees receive a stipend for office set up and an annual office supply budget. 

All applicants must reside in the United States and must be legally authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. The ASSISTments Foundation is unable to provide sponsorship for employment visa status, now or in the future. 

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, The ASSISTments Foundation seeks not just to accept differences, but to celebrate, support, and thrive on them for the benefit of our staff, our product, and our community. Employment is based solely on someone’s merit and qualifications directly related to their professional competence. We do not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of race, creed, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetics, protected veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, or any other characteristic protected by law. The law aside, we also do this because we believe it’s the right way to treat people. 

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To be considered, please submit a resume and cover letter (both required) to Careers@assistments.org.

To help ensure equity in our hiring process, we also invite you to submit this optional self-identification form along with your application. Completion of this form is voluntary and will not affect your opportunity for employment, or the terms or conditions of any potential employment. This form will be used for reporting purposes only and will be kept separate from all other application records, only accessible by the Human Resources department

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Learn More

• Groundbreaking Study Reveals ASSISTments Impact on Math Achievement & Equity 
• PROOF POINTS: The value of one-size-fits-all math homework
• AI Math Research by ASSISTments and WPI highlighted in Forbes
• New AI Math Tutor to Help Students Problem Solve

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