Senior Product Manager

CollegeVine is looking for a Senior Product Manager to help define the future of guidance, mentorship, and higher education attainment.

The right applicant for this role has proven experience with product management, cares about the company mission, and is discerning about company culture.

First, we are leveling the playing field of higher education for all students, regardless of socioeconomic status. To do this, we intend to make virtual guidance services available and affordable for all through a combination of near-peer mentorship and technology. As an PM at an early-stage company with national reach, you will influence the entire next generation of high schoolers and college grads-to-be. We encourage all applicants to learn more at https://www.collegevine.com.

Second, we are looking for candidates who wish to join an R&D organization centered around autonomy, authenticity, excellence, and pragmatism. We’re flexible with the practices we use and are only fixated on processes that make sense for a given project. We take time-bounded sprints from Scrum but maintain a Kanban work style that gives us more flexibility in properly solving problems. This eliminates arbitrary estimates and allows us to focus on delivering incredible value to our users. We care about roadmaps for strategic direction and are dynamic in our treatment of them; expect to be an active participant in setting the direction of the company.

We emphasize delivery over perfection, solving the correct problem over shipping the most glamorous solution. You will have an impact here.

What we expect from you

• • Proven experience in Product Management, preferably in a startup environment
  • To live at the intersection of business strategy, technology, and user experience
  • Excellent communication skills
  • Comfort with ambiguity
  • Ability to understand abstractions and engage in systems thinking
  • Tendency to ask really good questions
  • Enough of a technical understanding that you can meet our engineers in the middle
  • Enough of a UX and/or UI intuition to meet our designers in the middle
  • Enough of a data penchant to meet our data scientist in the middle

Benefits

• • Medical, dental, and vision insurance with a very generous employer contribution.
  • Regular team dinners and company outings.
  • A culture of mentorship. Become the near-peer mentor for one (or more!) of our consultants or program managers and be the help you wish you had.
  • Flexible hours with a 4-hour core – plan the rest of your workday as you wish, just give us the majority of your most creative hours. Productivity ideas: avoid traffic, never wait in line at the grocery store, wake up without an alarm clock, be around for your family.
  • Goal-based environment (as opposed to grind-based or decree-based environment; work smarter, not harder; intelligently, not mindlessly). We collaborate on setting goals, but you set your own process for accomplishing those goals. You will be entrusted with a lot of responsibility and you might even experience fulfillment and self-actualization as a result.
  • Join an R&D culture that celebrates mindfulness and takes the quality of your attention seriously. We don’t spam our slack channels; your manager will not come tap you on the shoulder asking for pointless things; we write things down after we discuss them in person; we try to minimize meetings.

Useful to know

• • You will be working with design and engineering teams that care a lot about product.
  • Old-school ed-tech user experiences are not acceptable to us. Our software must impress and work for a wide audience since we serve students and their families. On any given day, your code will be run by high schoolers, college students, young professionals, guidance counselors, parents, and grandparents from all walks of life.
  • Please submit a cover letter. We read them carefully and it forms our first impression of you.

Expect autonomy in exchange for transparency and results. Since you are well-read, curious, and self-aware, we will treat you like the awesome, interesting adult that you are. We have core hours and a goal-based environment; we understand mindfulness and the value of deep focus. We’re chasing a big idea and we need every good teammate we can find.