Cengage Group
Associate Product Manager
🇺🇸 Hybrid - OH
🕑 Full-Time
💰 $55K - $70K
💻 Product Development
🗓️ June 13th, 2025
CRM
Smartsheet
UX/UI
Edtech.com's Summary
Cengage Group is hiring an Associate Product Manager. This role involves managing course catalogs, supporting product lifecycle management, and collaborating with sales and marketing teams to improve career training programs. The position requires conducting market research, analyzing course performance, and engaging with vendors for content development.
Highlights
- Manage a portion of the Key Markets catalog and provide support to Product Managers.
- Assist with the creation of Product Strategy Documentation.
- Collaborate with sales and marketing teams on catalog launches.
- Support the 3PV operational footprint in vendor engagement and content reviews.
- Proficiency in Smartsheet and Microsoft Office Suite preferred.
- Proficiency in competitive intelligence tools a plus.
- Bachelor’s Degree preferred; 2+ years of Product Management experience required.
- Able to gather and synthesize market feedback effectively.
- Compensation range: $55,000.00 - $70,000.00 USD.
- Basic customer-facing or sales experience is desirable.
Associate Product Manager Full Description
Associate Product Manager
Ohio, USA
United States
Full time
We believe in the power and joy of learning
At Cengage Group, our employees have a direct impact in helping students around the world discover the power and joy of learning. We are bonded by our shared purpose – driving innovation that helps millions of learners improve their lives and achieve their dreams through education.
Our culture values diversity, engagement, and discovery
Our business is driven by our strong culture, and we know that creating an inclusive and diverse workplace is absolutely essential to the success of our company and our learners, as well as our individual well-being. We recognize the value of diverse perspectives in everything we do, and strive to ensure employees of all levels and backgrounds feel empowered to voice their ideas and bring their authentic selves to work. We achieve these priorities through inclusive programs, benefits, and initiatives that are integrated into the fabric of how we work every day. To learn more, please see https://www.cengagegroup.com/about/inclusion-and-diversity/
Our Team:
You'll be excited to learn that this role sits under the umbrella of Ed2go, part of Cengage Group, which has empowered millions of learners looking to improve their skills, get employed, and build a career. With over 2,000 academic partners, a growing roster of corporate customers, and an expanding direct-to-consumer channel, we are looking to significantly accelerate our business to address the global skills gap. Ed2go provides a catalog of more than 1,000 online courses across a wide variety of topics and industries to Continuing Education Departments within US Colleges and Universities. These non-credit offerings enable academic partners to upskill their community, enabling people to return to employment, make career transitions, and increase their earning power!
What this role won't include:
While our TPM team focuses on internal and customer-facing applications, user stories, UX/UI design, and the customer journey, this role is centered on managing our course catalog, making build/buy decisions, supporting GTM strategies, and driving the success of our career training programs. The APM will work closely with cross-functional teams to conduct market research, analyze course performance, and contribute to portfolio strategy, not software or feature development.
What you'll do here:
At ed2go, we create online career training programs that enable people to start or advance their careers by offering high-quality programs at an affordable price. Our students can complete a program and earn a certification in a fraction of the time and cost of a college degree, while using an online format that fits into their work/life schedule. As an Associate Product Manager (APM) on the Key Markets Team, you will play a key role in supporting product lifecycle management, research, and go-to-market execution for a small portion of our longer online Advanced Career Training (ACT) courses (ex: Trades, Advanced Manufacturing, Teacher Professional Development, Business, Accounting, Legal) that can take up to 12 months to complete. Some of our courses are programs that we build in-house with our content development team, while other courses are 3rd party vendor (3PV) programs where we sign partnerships with course providers (vendors).
Due to the size and market potential, ed2go has several product management resources working together within the Product Management Team. This Associate Product Manager role is an exciting, net-new addition to the team and encompasses 3 major areas of responsibility:
1. Product Management & Course Development Support:
- Catalog Ownership—This role will own a small portion of the Key Markets catalog and will provide high-level support (low-level support is provided by Team Support Staff) to the Product Managers (PM) and Team Lead.
- Supports the creation of Product Strategy Documentation and the product development lifecycle process for new products, major revisions, and maintenance.
- Works collaboratively with content project managers and product team members to support development projects, support risk mitigation strategies, and problem-solve as challenges arise.
- Can stand in for product managers in meetings and correspondence, and represent the product and the PM as needed.
- Provide high-level product management support for assigned projects, tasks, and programs. Catalog ownership involves a myriad of strategic and tactical work supporting their programs. Examples include writing product strategy documents for new courses we plan to develop; conducting market research on competitors; analyzing data from multiple sources (SEO, secret shopping, survey data, persona demographics; updating product positioning documentation; handling the logistics of product launches; monitoring sales performance and trends; building cases for investment opportunities, annual roadmap planning etc.).
- Performs competitive market research and maintains competitive insights as needed, such as competitive benchmarking, product offerings, pricing, market messaging, and summarizing competitive products.
2. Marketing and Sales Collaboration:
- Provides sales and marketing team members with catalog roadmap information and enablement materials to support sales opportunities and sales enablement/training for assigned courses.
- Coordinates with marketing team members on catalog product launches and supports marketing campaign strategies.
- Partners with Sales Engineering and Customer Support teams for sales-related inquiries.
3. Support the 3PV operational footprint:
- This APM role will not own our 3PV process but rather support the leaders within the product team who own and handle our 3PV strategy. Supporting this effort would include these types of activities:
- Identifying potential vendors and engaging with them to cultivate a collaborative relationship
- Securing Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreements with potential vendors
- Performing content reviews and assisting other product managers with reviews to determine if content meets ed2go standards and rigor
- Assisting with the development of Product Launch Documents
- Enter and maintain updates for opportunities into the CRM (Capsule). Handle training delivery and documentation for Capsule.
Skills you will need here:
- Ability to gather and synthesize customer and market feedback.
- Quick learner, with the ability to multitask, execute quickly, and get things done.
- Passion for continuous innovation and improvement of business processes.
- Analytic problem-solving background with the ability to synthesize structured and unstructured data into coherent results.
- Ability to solve complicated problems by breaking them down into digestible chunks.
- Able to self-manage and self-access personal progress against milestones and deliverables with a high degree of accountability and personal urgency.
- Proven track record to take initiative and follow the project through to conclusion autonomously.
- Basic customer-facing or sales experience.
- Strong orientation to detail work and follow-through.
- Possesses excellent time management and organizational skills.
- Effective communication and follow-through.
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s Degree preferred
- Proficiency using Smartsheet (preferred)
- Bilingual in English/Spanish, but not required
- 2+ years' work experience in Product Management
- Helpful to have experience within the areas of: project management, program management, policy/compliance management
- Proficiency in computer applications such as, Microsoft Office Suite including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Google Productivity Suite including Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
- Excellent written communication with grammar, punctuation, and spelling accuracy
- Knowledge of SEO, data visualization, and competitive intelligence tools (preferred)
- Experience driving or supporting the launch of a new process, projects, or products a plus.
Cengage Group is committed to working with broad talent pools to attract and hire strong and most qualified individuals. Our job applicants are considered regardless of race, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, genetic information, disability, age, veteran status, and any other classification protected by applicable federal, state, provincial or local laws.
Cengage is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities including during our job application process. If you are an applicant with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in our job application process, please contact us at accommodations.ta@cengage.com or at +1 (617)289-7917.
About Cengage Group
Cengage Group, a global education technology company serving millions of learners, provides affordable, quality digital products and services that equip students with the skills and competencies needed to be job ready. For more than 100 years, we have enabled the power and joy of learning with trusted, engaging content, and now, integrated digital platforms. We serve the higher education, workforce skills, secondary education, English language teaching and research markets worldwide. Through our scalable technology, including MindTap and Cengage Unlimited, we support all learners who seek to improve their lives and achieve their dreams through education.
Compensation
At Cengage Group, we take great pride in our commitment to providing a comprehensive and rewarding Total Rewards package designed to support and empower our employees. Click here to learn more about our Total Rewards Philosophy.
The full base pay range has been provided for this position. Individual base pay will vary based on work schedule, qualifications, experience, internal equity, and geographic location. Sales roles often incorporate a significant incentive compensation program beyond this base pay range.$55,000.00 - $70,000.00 USD
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