Cognella is looking for a Senior Product Manager with the creativity, vision, and experience to help us achieve our ambitious goal of breaking new ground in the publishing industry.
As the Product Owner on key user-facing projects, this web product position will work with internal and external stakeholders to both discover and translate high-level concepts into a detailed product plan. The Senior Product manager will perform market research and analysis to guide our efforts, always taking a keen, entrepreneurial business eye to ensure that our approach has the highest possible impact. The successful applicant has both strategic and tactical skills to plan and guide the creation of a great web application from start to finish.
As our team is a small, entrepreneurial group, we’re looking for someone with a “whatever it takes” mindset to ensure success with all of our initiatives – regardless of role norms. As products evolve and grow, so will the team and our process, allowing individuals to refine their focus and develop skills in their area of interest within the product development life cycle.
Responsibilities:
- Serve the role of Product Owner on externally-facing web projects
- Perform analysis of market and customer data to establish product direction
- Interpret and clarify business requirements, prioritize features, assist with project plans, write and refactor user stories, establish acceptance criteria
- Act as a liaison between business stakeholders and web development team
- Work closely with an offshore development team to help ensure that work in progress will meet the requirement goals
- Work to improve usability, design, and overall experience of Cognella’s web products
- Initially contribute to the small team in additional roles as needed:
- refining story requirements for developers
- managing project timelines
- testing to ensure submitted development work meets requirements
- training and documenting results
- Review and improve our agile product development process
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s Degree
- 5+ years of relevant, hands-on experience in an agile web development environment
- Website design, development, and QA experience
- Experience working on client portals and online stores
- Deep understanding of the software development life cycle from multiple perspectives
- Understanding of UX design – able to discuss and sketch out ideas and wireframes quickly
- Extremely organized, thorough, and detail-oriented
- Excellent communication skills, including the ability to effectively interview internal stakeholders and clients
This position is based out of our corporate office located in the Sorrento Valley area of San Diego, California. The role reports to our VP of Technology and will have regular communication with the CEO. Cognella offers a competitive salary and generous stock options along with a comprehensive and competitive benefits package including: health, vision, dental, generous vacation, holiday, and sick time, as well as a 401(k) matching plan.
About Cognella:
Cognella offers all of our team members a stimulating and entrepreneurial work environment with great colleagues, and the opportunity to shape their position. If you’ve ever wanted to be part of a growing entrepreneurial business, this is your chance to really make a difference.
Cognella, Inc. is a leading provider of personalized higher-education publishing solutions, operating web properties and services under two brands: Cognella Academic Publishing (www.cognella.com) and University Readers (www.universityreaders.com). We enable professors to control their choice of content, allowing them to design and tailor course materials to specific courses and learning objectives. Our unique approach has enabled us to become a trusted source for more than 4,000 instructors and 125,000 students annually at over 600 colleges and universities nationwide. Cognella has approximately 70 employees and is headquartered in San Diego. We have a small and agile development team that is backed by the support of a 20-year old business with an established revenue model. We’re working on some exciting, transformative projects this year that will both revolutionize the academic publishing space and save students money.
Cognella, Inc – An Equal Opportunity Employer
Recruiters, please do not contact us.