Lead, Product Management

Lead, Product Management, ELL Institutional Courseware

This role aligns to industry-level titles such as Head of Product, Director of Product Management, Product Portfolio Director, or similar product leadership positions with responsibility for portfolio strategy, commercial performance, and team leadership.

Role Overview

The Lead, Product Management, ELL Institutional Courseware owns Pearson’s global portfolio of English language learning materials for schools, higher education and adult education. The portfolio spans print, blended and digital courseware, supplementary materials, teacher professional development, and partner-created content.

This is an opportunity to shape the future of a major global education portfolio. The role will decide where Pearson invests, grows, localises, simplifies and exits, with accountability for creating products that teachers choose, improve student learning outcomes, and deliver sustainable revenue growth and strong returns.

A central part of the mandate is leading the evolution of a print-heavy portfolio towards connected, digital and AI-enabled learning experiences. Pearson intends to lead this transition while staying grounded in the needs and readiness of teachers and institutions.

The role owns the full product lifecycle, from customer discovery and portfolio strategy through development, launch, performance management and retirement. It owns investment cases for approval by the ELL Leadership Team, recommends pricing and packaging, and drives initiatives to improve revenue and profitability.

The role leads a global team of approximately 15 colleagues through managers and works across Content, Learning Science, Engineering, Assessment, UX and AI. It is a member of the ELL Product Leadership Team and ELL Content Leadership Team, acting as the senior product owner for institutional courseware and aligning Product, Content, Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and Finance around a clear portfolio direction.

Key Responsibilities

Set the Portfolio Strategy

• Define and execute the global strategy and roadmap for institutional courseware, based on customer needs, market opportunities, learning outcomes, and commercial performance.
• Manage portfolio investments, prioritisation, localisation, innovation, and product lifecycle decisions.
• Act as the senior product authority, providing strategic recommendations to the ELL Leadership Team.

Understand Customers and Markets

• Build deep understanding of learners, educators, institutions, ministries, and partners across priority markets.
• Use customer insight, market trends, learning evidence, and performance data to drive product and investment decisions.
• Support strategic customer and ministry engagements alongside Sales teams.

Create Market-Winning Courseware

• Translate strategy into compelling value propositions, product roadmaps, and requirements.
• Lead cross-functional teams to deliver high-impact learning solutions that balance customer value, learning effectiveness, quality, speed, and commercial outcomes.
• Validate opportunities through customer research, pilots, and data-driven decision-making.

Lead the AI and Digital Transition

• Drive the evolution from print-first products to digital, blended, and AI-enabled learning experiences.
• Identify and scale responsible AI opportunities that enhance learning, teaching, accessibility, and product efficiency.
• Ensure AI-enabled products meet standards for transparency, safety, privacy, accessibility, and intellectual property compliance.

Drive Growth and Investment Return

• Develop business cases, pricing strategies, and investment recommendations for new and existing products.
• Partner with Sales, Finance, and Revenue Operations to achieve customer, learning, revenue, profitability, and ROI objectives.
• Take decisive action to optimise, reposition, or retire underperforming products.

Measure Learning and Product Performance

• Establish and monitor success metrics across learning outcomes, adoption, engagement, satisfaction, retention, revenue, and profitability.
• Use evidence and performance data to continuously improve portfolio effectiveness.

Lead the Team and Organisation

• Lead and develop a global team of approximately 15 product professionals.
• Foster excellence in product management, customer discovery, strategy, commercial thinking, and AI-enabled product development.
• Build a culture of accountability, collaboration, innovation, and customer focus.

Expected Results

• A clear global portfolio strategy and roadmap, understood across ELL.
• Sustainable revenue growth, improved profitability and stronger returns from courseware investment.
• A simpler, more intentional portfolio with clear investment and retirement choices.
• Global products that combine scale with effective localisation.
• A credible transition towards digital and AI-enabled courseware that customers can adopt successfully.
• Measurable improvements in student learning outcomes, teacher effectiveness and customer value.
• Trusted relationships with major institutions, ministries, distributors and partners.
• Strong alignment across Product, Content, Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Finance and Technology.
• A high-performing global product management team with strong managers and clear accountability.

Experience

• Relevant experience in product management, portfolio leadership, general management or a related field, including experience leading multiple teams or managing managers.
• Proven success setting strategy and making investment choices across a complex portfolio of products, markets or customer segments.
• A track record of turning customer insight into differentiated products and successful commercial outcomes.
• Experience owning business cases and managing performance against revenue, profitability, customer and return expectations.
• Strong judgement across investment, prioritisation, pricing, packaging and portfolio rationalisation.
• Experience leading cross-functional product development in a global, matrixed organisation.
• Experience building product teams and developing product leaders.
• Experience in education, publishing, courseware, EdTech or learning products is strongly preferred.
• Experience applying AI, data or emerging technology to products is preferred.
• No specific degree is required. Relevant experience and demonstrated outcomes are valued.

Skills, Leadership & Capabilities

• Strong commercial and strategic acumen, with the ability to balance customer and learning outcomes with revenue, profitability, risk, and return.
• Proven expertise in product strategy, portfolio management, customer discovery, roadmap development, and stakeholder engagement.
• Data- and evidence-led decision maker, using customer insight, learning science, analytics, and sound judgement to shape investment and product decisions.
• Strong leadership capabilities, with experience leading global teams, influencing senior stakeholders, and creating a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Customer- and learner-focused, with the ability to make clear decisions in complex and ambiguous environments.
• Practical understanding of AI and machine learning concepts, including prompt engineering and the application of AI to products, workflows, and decision-making. Hands-on model development expertise is not required.

Location & Work Set Up

This is a full-time hybrid role based in the UK, Spain or Poland, with regular collaboration from a local Pearson office.

Who we are:

At Pearson, our purpose is simple: to help people realize the life they imagine through learning. We believe that every learning opportunity is a chance for a personal breakthrough. We are the world's lifelong learning company. For us, learning isn't just what we do. It's who we are. To learn more: We are Pearson.

Pearson is an Equal Opportunity Employer and a member of E-Verify. Employment decisions are based on qualifications, merit and business need. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status or any other group protected by law. We actively seek qualified candidates who are protected veterans and individuals with disabilities as defined under VEVRAA and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.

If you are an individual with a disability and are unable or limited in your ability to use or access our career site as a result of your disability, you may request reasonable accommodations by emailing TalentExperienceGlobalTeam@grp.pearson.com.

Job: Product Management

Job Family: PRODUCT

Organization: English Language Learning

Schedule: FULL_TIME

Workplace Type: Hybrid

Req ID: 25425