Edtech.com's Summary

HMH is hiring a Director of Product Management. The role leads strategy, product lifecycle, and market success for Grades 6-12 ELA Core solutions, including managing product development, pricing, and go-to-market strategies. The Director collaborates across departments, manages an Assistant Product Manager, and drives business results for the Core ELA portfolio.

Highlights

Lead full lifecycle strategy and market success for HMH Into Literature product and related Grades 6-12 ELA solutions.
Conduct market research including customer interviews, competitive analysis, and product-market fit evaluation using lean-agile approaches.
Develop pricing models, business cases, go-to-market strategies, and manage P&L for the product portfolio.
Coordinate with Sales, Marketing, Finance, Operations, Customer Success, and Content teams to achieve business goals.
Manage and mentor an Assistant Product Manager and collaborate with leadership across K-12 Literacy portfolios.
Use data-driven analysis to assess market opportunities, product performance, and competitive positioning.
Require Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 5 years experience in K-12 educational technology with G6-12 ELA expertise.
Experience with lean-agile and design thinking product development methodologies is required.
Strong leadership, communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills, including engagement with executive management.
Preferred qualifications include an MBA or master’s degree, Pragmatic Marketing certification, and entrepreneurial/start-up experience.
Salary range is $135,000 to $141,000.

Director of Product Management Full Description

HMH is a learning technology company committed to delivering connected solutions that engage learners, empower educators and improve student outcomes. As a leading provider of K-12 core curriculum, supplemental and intervention solutions, and professional learning services, HMH partners with educators and school districts to uncover solutions that unlock students' potential and extend teachers' capabilities.

HMH serves more than 50 million students and 4 million educators in 150 countries. For more information, visit www.hmhco.com

The Director of ELA 6-12, Core Product Management and Strategy role leads as the strategist, P&L manager, and spokesperson for all Core Grades 6-12 ELA solutions. The Director drives full lifecycle strategy, implementation, and market success of HMH Into Literature, including product creation, product roadmap, pricing and offerings, overall business case and, go-to-market strategy.

This position defines requirements for product development and coordinates with product management teams in other lines of business, Sales, Finance, Operations, Marketing, Customer Success and other internal groups to drive customer success and achieve business goals. The Director role reports to the SVP Product Management & Strategy of Core Solutions to coordinate closely on all decisions, actions, and development plans impacting the 6-12 Literature portfolio. This role manages an Assistant Product Manager and works closely with the VP of K-6 Literacy to provide leadership and unified direction across the Core K-12 ELA portfolio.

Primary Responsibilities:

Market Strategy:

Discover problems in the market by interviewing customers, recent evaluators and untapped, potential customers. Validate urgent problems to show their pervasiveness in the market using lean-agile methodologies.
Evaluate product-market fit for the portfolio on an ongoing basis, using data-driven analysis to conduct win/loss analysis and understand the buying process.
Articulate and leverage the organization's unique abilities to deliver value to the market.
Identify competitive and alternative offerings in the market and assess their strengths and weaknesses.
Develop a strategy for winning against the competition.
Inventory HMH assets (technical, skills, services, patents, other) and determine ways that they can be leveraged.

Focus Strategy:

Map needs with target markets and analyze the market segments to actively pursue.
Ensure that the targeted segments are large enough to support the current and future business of the product.
Determine which channels best align with your markets' buying preferences.
Integrate products into a coherent portfolio of products focused on the market. Manage the portfolio like a "product" (business plan, positioning, buying process, market requirements and marketing plan).

Business Strategy:

Perform objective analysis of potential market opportunities to provide a basis for investment, articulating market learnings and quantifying the risk, including a financial model.
Establish a pricing model, schedules, guidelines and procedures.
Determine the most effective way to deliver a complete solution to an identified market problem. Where you have gaps in your offering, analyze whether to buy, build or partner to complete the solution for your market.
Monitor and analyze key performance indicators to determine how well the product is performing in the market, how it impacts the company operations, and ultimately, how it contributes to profit.
Focus your teams' creative spirit on solving market problems by leveraging your organization's distinctive competencies.

Planning:

• Position the product by its ability to solve market problems.

• Create internal positioning documents that will be used to develop external messages focused on each key buyer or persona.

• Define the archetypical users of your products or services through user personas.

• Articulate and prioritize personas and their problems through requirements so that the appropriate products can be built.

• Build an effective relationship and team between PM&S and development

• Serve as a checkpoint along the way to provide context and clarification to development

• Illustrate market problems in a "story" that puts the problem in context. Use scenarios are one component of requirements.

• Manage proactive communications with relevant stakeholders from strategy through execution.

Launch and Support

• Plan, execute and measure effectiveness of strategic launches.

• Provide needed market and solution information to support the operations group.

Communication & Supervision:

Maintain strong, ongoing channels of communication with Sales, Marketing, Learning Experience Design, Platform Product Management, Content Delivery, and other internal departments
Lead cross-functional teams to execute processes and plans
Manage and mentor an Assistant Product Manager and assess staff through key evaluation points per year

Requirements:

Bachelor's Degree
At least 5 years of experience in K12 educational technology
G6-12 ELA subject-matter expertise from a teaching or ed-tech market perspective
Experience using lean-agile and design thinking methodologies to develop and launch products
Demonstrated strong leadership skills
Superior verbal and written communication skills; superior presentation skills
Superior inter-personal skills with all levels including executive management
Demonstrated conceptual & analytical thinking; vision; leadership & management; prioritization; collaboration; decision-making; negotiation; problem-solving; tactical execution; product & market knowledge.

Nice to have:

MBA or Masters --preferably in the content area or in business management or marketing
Pragmatic Marketing Framework certification desired
Experience in an entrepreneurial or start-up environment

Salary Range:

$135 - 141,000

Application Deadline:
The application window for this position is anticipated to close on 11/28/25 - the posting may be available past this date but is not guaranteed.

HMH is fully committed to Equal Employment Opportunity and to attracting, retaining, developing and promoting the most qualified employees without regard to race, gender, color, religion, sexual orientation, family status, marital status, pregnancy, gender identity, ethnic/national origin, ancestry, age, disability, military status, genetic predisposition, citizenship status, status as a disabled veteran, recently separated veteran, Armed Forces service medal veteran, other covered veteran, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. We are dedicated to providing a work environment free from discrimination and harassment, and where employees are treated with respect and dignity. We actively participate in E-Verify.

Original Job Description

HMH serves more than 50 million students and 4 million educators in 150 countries. For more information, visit www.hmhco.com

Primary Responsibilities:

Market Strategy:

Discover problems in the market by interviewing customers, recent evaluators and untapped, potential customers. Validate urgent problems to show their pervasiveness in the market using lean-agile methodologies.
Evaluate product-market fit for the portfolio on an ongoing basis, using data-driven analysis to conduct win/loss analysis and understand the buying process.
Articulate and leverage the organization's unique abilities to deliver value to the market.
Identify competitive and alternative offerings in the market and assess their strengths and weaknesses.
Develop a strategy for winning against the competition.
Inventory HMH assets (technical, skills, services, patents, other) and determine ways that they can be leveraged.

Focus Strategy:

Map needs with target markets and analyze the market segments to actively pursue.
Ensure that the targeted segments are large enough to support the current and future business of the product.
Determine which channels best align with your markets' buying preferences.
Integrate products into a coherent portfolio of products focused on the market. Manage the portfolio like a "product" (business plan, positioning, buying process, market requirements and marketing plan).

Business Strategy:

Perform objective analysis of potential market opportunities to provide a basis for investment, articulating market learnings and quantifying the risk, including a financial model.
Establish a pricing model, schedules, guidelines and procedures.
Determine the most effective way to deliver a complete solution to an identified market problem. Where you have gaps in your offering, analyze whether to buy, build or partner to complete the solution for your market.
Monitor and analyze key performance indicators to determine how well the product is performing in the market, how it impacts the company operations, and ultimately, how it contributes to profit.
Focus your teams' creative spirit on solving market problems by leveraging your organization's distinctive competencies.