Product Manager – Contractor (1099)

What we're looking for:

Working closely with the Sr. Manager, Product, the Product Manager will be accountable for a roadmap of capabilities that will help InStride scale innovative workforce education solutions across all of our users: corporate partners, academic partners, working adult learners, and internal teams. The ideal candidate will be able to seamlessly collaborate across product lines and partners and is passionate about building solutions to help our business grow. The role requires a combination of strategic problem solving, analytical prowess, and cross-functional leadership.

As the role will likely focus on technical product pods, this Product Manager must be comfortable operating deeply in technical problem spaces – partnering closely with engineering to drive platform, architecture, and internal tooling initiatives – while translating that work into durable business and user outcomes.

Skills we’d love to see you show off:

• Translating: Ability to translate complex market and business needs into clear product requirements.
• Technical Product Leadership: Comfort leading highly technical initiatives such as platform enhancements, internal tools, system integrations, and architectural or framework migrations; able to engage engineers in detailed discussions and understand tradeoffs.
• Systems Thinking: Ability to reason about complex systems, dependencies, data flows, and long-term scalability when defining product direction.
• Data-driven Decision Making: Strong analytical skills and inclination to use data (or proxy data) to inform decisions and prioritization
• Clear, Tailored Communication: Strong verbal and written communication across a diverse set of partners and team members; writes clearly, succinctly, and in a compelling manner
• Relationship Management: Able to build rapport and trust across stakeholder groups; strong listener who displays emotional intelligence
• Cross-functional Leadership: Experience partnering cross-functionally to effectively ask questions, listen, uncover perspectives, present options, build consensus, and effectuate new ideas; Proven experience working closely with engineering teams to shape solutions, sequence work, and balance technical health with business outcomes.
• Planning and Execution: Designs strong project plans, effectively mobilizes colleagues across teams, and ensures the work is completed on time and to a high standard

Who you are:

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