Senior Technical Product Manager

THE OPPORTUNITY

The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the nonprofit organization that presents the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, is looking for a Senior Technical Product Manager

The Senior Technical Product Manager is a skilled collaborator and leader with experience overseeing product development, people, and projects. They are a thoughtful, detail-oriented, and empathetic team member who is accustomed to managing multiple projects at the same time. Collaboration is second nature to the Senior Technical Product Manager. They are able to convey complicated technical concepts to non-technical colleagues and are generous with their time and their knowledge. They respect the subject matter expertise of all members of a small, mission-driven non-profit organization, and thrive in a team-based environment. The Senior Technical Product Manager is committed to the mission and values of the Alliance and ensures the needs of the key constituents who leverage the Alliance’s web platforms are met.

The Senior Technical Product Manager holds the lead role in ensuring the integrity and stability of the technology platform (the Portal) that delivers the annual Scholastic Art & Writing Awards along with the associated systems that leverage the data in the Portal. The Portal is utilized by hundreds of thousands of young people, thousands of educators and affiliate partners, and Alliance staff every year. It is a critical delivery mechanism that enables the Alliance to achieve its mission.

This is a full-time, exempt position reporting to the Director, Programs & Operations and will be responsible for supervising a full-time Full Stack Jr. Developer. The position can be fully remote, but the Senior Technical Product Manager can also utilize the Alliance's offices located in downtown Manhattan, New York City if in-person/hybrid schedule is preferred. Standard in-person and virtual office hours are 9:30 am – 5:30 pm ET with occasional evening and weekend work. 

RESPONSIBILITIES

The ideal candidate will be an adept product manager, effective communicator, and have a strong passion for technology, the arts, education, and supporting creative youth. The Associate Director will be responsible for:

Product management of the Portal:

• Develop and manage the development flow to ensure business priorities are being met by the Portal

• Gather requirements and documentation

• Track issues and remediate defects

• Manage timelines and expectations for Portal development

• Vendor management

• Liaise with Programs team members, including constituent- and Affiliate partner-facing teams, to help them resolve user issues, understand the scope and impact of technical issues, and communicate technical issues to external users as needed

• Anticipate and track related expenses to ensure project stays on budget

Overseeing, managing, and maintaining the Portal and its associated technical systems:

• Active User Portal

• Online Award archive

• Offline archives

• Affiliate partner microsites

• Technical repositories and cloud-based account management

• Quality assurance systems

Maintaining and managing Portal-related data systems:

• Ensure award data and content is delivered to the public facing website and is properly archived after each season.

• Run advanced data queries from cloud-based servers

• Analyze data, creating reports, and presentations that provide insight into Portal usage and stability

• Ensure business users have access to the data they need to run the program

• Develop new technology initiatives based on data analysis, and in collaboration with colleagues

Providing technical management and support for the Alliance’s public web presence:

• Maintenance of web and database servers

• Analytics for all web assets

• Monitor Wordpress systems for Alliance websites and blogs, including artandwriting.org and newsroom.artandwriting.org

• Support external-facing web platforms managed by other teams, including the Partner Resource Site (partners.artandwriting.org)

• Collaborate across teams to manage timelines and expectations for web development projects

Manage the Alliance's internal technology team and the relationship with and work output of 3rd-party vendors

• Act as the liaison between the business owners and vendors who build, enhance, and maintain the portal.

• Manage and maintain the product management systems and processes that ensure the Alliance has a clear and coherent set of requirements for the Portal and that any technical or user experience defects detected are quickly and thoroughly remediated in the priority set by the business owners.

• Be comfortable leading Agile processes including SCRUM and Lean.

• For the internal team, the Associate Director must act as a nurturing manager who consistently gets the best work from others.

• Collaborate with Alliance leadership and senior Programs staff around longer-term technology strategies, planning, and decision-making

• Collaborate with an Operations Coordinator to provide high level advice, strategy and input on maintenance of internal systems

Thank you for your consideration in choosing Scholastic.

#LI-MV1

HOW YOU CAN FIT (Qualifications)

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

Required skills will include:

• Experience managing people

• Experience managing projects across teams

• Agile product management methodologies (SCRUM and Lean preferred)

• Application testing experience – including the development of quality assurance plans

• Product and project management with third-party teams

• Server management/storage experience

• Ability to translate between technical and non-technical colleagues

• Exceptional communication

• Physical computer setup and management

• Troubleshooting and problem-solving expertise

Required Technical Knowledge

While the Senior Technical Product Manager is not expected to do hands-on coding on a regular basis, they have a deep technical understanding of the way modern web applications are built, maintained, and connected to other systems. This includes a basic understanding of front-end and back-end code – enough to enable troubleshooting and prioritization – and how APIs, databases, and cloud-based hosting work. They have enough technical knowledge to manage a junior technical resource who performs quality assurance of the Portal, development of requirements, and data pulls from back end and cloud-based systems.

The Senior Technical Product Manager should possess advanced knowledge and experience in:

• WordPress

• All MS Office/365 Apps including PowerApps

Agile product management tools (JIRA, Confluence, Asana, Trello)

Knowledge and experience in:

• Agile technical workflow apps (Git/Github/RedMine, etc.)

• API Management (backend and acquisition)

• HTML, CSS

• JavaScript

• Server system management

• Product management of products that utilize Amazon Web Services and Cognito

Some familiarity with:

• Object Oriented Programming

• Design tools, such as Adobe InDesign, FIGMA, and/or Adobe Illustrator

• Google Analytics and SEO Tools

Although this is not a coding role, exceptional candidates will have some experience in one or more of the following:

• PHP

• Crystal Reports

• Stripe APIs

• Unit testing

• Mac Unix Console

• Windows PowerShell

Experience: The successful candidate will have at least 15 years of technical product management experience, ideally with some experience managing a third-party development team.

Education: Degree in a relevant field preferred

Scholastic is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Our policy is clear: there shall be no discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, pregnancy, national origin, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, or status as a disabled veteran or Vietnam veteran. Those factors shall not influence the determination of qualifications for a job or other opportunity within the company. Further, all personnel actions (such as compensation, tuition aid, benefits, transfers, promotions, and dismissals, company-sponsored training, social and recreational programs) shall be administered without discrimination.

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