Vice President of Product Development

Job description

Why we need you Springboard Collaborative invites talented and passionate candidates to apply for the position of (internal title - Product Development Leader). The Vice President of Product Development will be responsible for overseeing both curriculum and application development to align the organization's product strategy with overall enterprise goals. A successful candidate will have experience in managing large teams, developing and driving product/service roadmaps, and implementing high-fidelity services in early education classrooms. This is a remote position, and candidates must be eligible to work and reside in the United States. Springboard Collaborative closes the opportunity gap by closing the gap between home and school. By enlisting families as teaching partners, Springboard increases students’ access to instructional time, thereby improving learning outcomes. We envision a world in which educators and families work together to help children unlock their full potential. The Vice President of Product Development supports this goal through continuous product improvement that fuels academic development and meets the evolving needs of districts, teachers, parents, and students. The Vice President of Product Development will supervise the Curriculum and Instruction leader, the Product Engineering leader, the Program Services leader, and four product owners. The Vice President of Product Development will report to the President and work as part of the Senior Leadership Team. This is a great opportunity to support an entrepreneurial team to maximize the impact of a rapidly growing organization. You can read more about the requirements, competencies, goals, and responsibilities below. We'd love to have you join us! This is important We are an equal opportunity employer. Diversity is more than a commitment at Springboard Collaborative - it’s at the core of what we do and how we do it. No one can solve a problem better than those who experience it firsthand. That’s why Springboard aspires to hire a diverse team that reflects the marginalized communities we serve. We also know that having a diverse workforce makes for a better workplace. Springboard’s hiring process seeks individuals who value diversity across race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, national origin, and more. Finally, if you’re passionate about an open role, we encourage you to apply - even if you don’t meet 100% of the qualifications listed on the job description! Here are your priorities in the first year: You are responsible for the adoption and fidelity of a new decision making framework and ways of working cross functionally, called the Pillars and Capabilities decision framework, across the Product Development team. You will identify and execute improvement opportunities that result from an externally managed randomized control trial aiming to evaluate program efficacy and establish external credibility of our model. You will integrate the Program Services team into the product development team, and support their acclimation into development ways of working and operating procedures. You will ensure our new Family App and Program Fidelity App are ready to extend the value of our programming, and drive utility, satisfaction, and outcomes. Here are your responsibilities within and beyond the first year: You own the strategic product portfolio and oversee product lifecycle execution to drive on-time feature delivery and learning outcomes. Act as the strategic bridge between Program Development, Curriculum & Instruction, and Technology teams; ensuring that science of learning, instructional design, and rigorous evidence of student outcomes directly drive product design. Define and maintain a unified, multi-year product lifecycle roadmap that balances component-level roadmaps with platform-wide strategies. You lead and manage the product development teams, individual contributors, and departmental resources. Recruit, mentor, and coach a highly skilled, mission-driven team, establishing a high-performance culture grounded in intellectual honesty, speed, and customer empathy. Manage and optimize the annual departmental budget to maximize product development margins and ensure a positive budget variance. Champion an outcome-driven culture where the team prioritizes OKRs (student development, retention, and family/educator engagement) over raw feature output. You own the team operating playbook and elevate the discipline of product management through strong leadership and consistent reinforcement of best practices. In collaboration with the Project Management Office and agile/scrum facilitators, maintain consistent, lightweight agile rituals, artifacts, and communication patterns that maintain momentum. You oversee the development and maintenance of customer-facing technology. Lead engineering and product owners on core architecture decisions, product/system performance, trade-offs, and critical build-vs-buy evaluations. Ensure all digital software is architected for seamless institutional deployment. Enforce strict student data privacy policies and ensure the digital product portfolio complies with accessibility standards. You ensure product development is aligned with go-to-market initiatives and delivery. Collaborate with executive leaders to design, experiment with, and deploy strategic pricing and packaging models. Collaborate with Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success to coordinate successful launches, pilot recruitment, pricing tests, and comprehensive post-launch enablement. You are responsible for understanding and driving product efficacy through continuous product discovery, rapid prototyping, and customer feedback loops that validate investments before scaling development. Define, instrument, and track product performance metrics to guide post-launch roadmap adjustments. Maintain a rigorous system of continuous user testing, cohort analyses, and classroom pilots to translate customer insights and pain points into actionable roadmap improvements. Lead continuous market mapping and competitive analysis to identify product differentiators, whitespace opportunities, and emerging educational service/product/technology trends. What you offer us Here are the competencies we expect the right candidate to have: Coaching & mentoring - You inspire and motivate a high-performing growth team, attract and retain top talent, and create a collaborative, accountable, results-driven culture. You provide timely constructive feedback to encourage continuous improvement and train team members to develop skills, improve performance, and achieve goals. Strategic Prioritization & Resource Alignment - You have the ability to objectively weigh competing product initiatives against strategic value, organizational capacity, and technical feasibility, making high-integrity trade-off decisions that maximize long-term product impact and return on investment. Product Strategy - You have the capacity to formulate a cohesive, forward-looking vision that translates market needs, user pain points, and organizational goals into prioritized, value-driven product roadmaps. Life Cycle Management - You have deep fluency across the entire product development lifecycle - from early-stage validation and customer discovery to launch, scaling, and post-release optimization - ensuring enduring product health and value. Delivery Coordination - You have the skill to foster shared accountability and maintain execution velocity across product and cross-functional teams to ensure predictable, high-quality product releases. Evidence-Based Insights & Data Literacy - You have the aptitude for synthesizing research results into a coherent evidence base that informs product pivots, validates hypotheses, and measures core outcomes. Product & Solution Fluency - You have a deep conceptual and operational understanding of pedagogical value propositions, allowing you to articulate how product capabilities directly resolve core user needs in education. Sector Expertise - You have a comprehensive understanding of the educational landscape, including pedagogical trends, school system structures, funding cycles, and regulatory constraints, and how these external factors shape product design and adoption. Performance Measurement & Decision Support - You have the capability to define, instrument, and track clear success metrics (such as engagement, retention, and learning outcomes) to make objective, data-informed investment and resource allocation decisions. Here are the requirements we expect the right candidate to have: 10+ years of progressive product management experience in a fast-paced environment, with a proven track record of driving products from initial strategy through successful market delivery. 5+ years of direct people management experience with a proven ability to attract top-tier talent, restructure teams in accordance with evolving strategic goals, and mentor teams. Impeccable verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills shown through demonstrated experience working directly with educational C-suite-level stakeholders. Experience leading/collaborating with curriculum development and engineering teams, showing the ability to engage credibly and balance long-term technical feasibility and scalability with near-term product velocity. Experience partnering with Go-to-Market stakeholders to support pilots, state adoptions, and sales-led or product-led growth motions. Deep knowledge of the K-12 educational landscape and a strong understanding of the science of learning, instructional design, and curriculum development. Proficient in Agile, Scrum, and Human-Centered Design frameworks. Here are our nice-to-haves for the right candidate: Experience with the delivery of educational services While this description provides an overview of the goals and responsibilities of the Vice President of Product Development, we are seeking candidates who demonstrate flexibility and can adapt to evolving needs in an entrepreneurial environment. What we offer you Compensation Our compensation values: At Springboard, compensation equity is integral to how we operate and to our commitment to competitiveness, pay equity, performance-based rewards, transparent & equitable career growth, and progressive benefits . Compensation for this role: The compensation for a candidate who meets the position requirements will be $252,699 . Springboard does not negotiate the offered salary during the offer conversation. Benefits At Springboard, we feel it is important to take care of our employees, which is why we offer a competitive benefits package. These benefits include the following: The usual stuff - Medical insurance with a cash stipend for those who waive Springboard coverage. Options include PPO and High Deductible/HSA. We’ll take care of it - We fully cover your short & long-term disability coverage. Securing your future - We match up to 6% of your salary in 403(b) retirement contributions after your first twelve months at Springboard. Paid Time Off (PTO) is important - Four weeks (20 days) annually. At Springboard, time off doesn’t need to be earned to be used. Everyone gets access to their time at the start of the calendar year. Holidays! - All 11 federal holidays, two extra floating holidays, weekdays between December 25th - January 1st, and your birthday! Under the weather? - We don’t cap the number of sick days available to employees. Paid Leave - Parental Leave (12 weeks after the first 6 months of employment). Marriage Leave (five days). Technology - All employees receive a Springboard laptop and an optional monitor. Springboard uses Google Workspace and Asana. We are committed to your development - We provide personal & professional development funding of $2000/year. Your wellness is a priority - Our Employee Assistance Program (EAP) provides support for stress/anxiety, finance, law, family, substance abuse, grief, and more. Transparency is key - We ensure regular opportunities to discuss individual and organizational development and our commitment to equity. Consistent and structured real-time feedback is foundational to Springboard’s culture. Location and travel Applications are welcome from any location within the United States. This role can be performed remotely but will require 10-20% travel, almost fully self-directed. Required travel will include quarterly leadership team and annual org-wide retreats, along with (rare) funder- or partner-requested in-person meetings. Self-directed travel will include program visits and general team management needs. Springboard requires in-person employees at a Springboard facility or participating in in-person programming or events to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 unless a medical or religious exemption is approved. Being fully vaccinated means an individual is at least two weeks past their final dose of a CDC-authorized COVID-19 vaccine regimen. As a condition of employment, newly hired employees will be asked to provide their COVID-19 vaccination status and proof of vaccination, as required. Please note that this employer participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S.