This company keeps busy disrupting the ed-tech space and now has a huge suite of supplemental educational products that are ready to be folded together into a discrete business line. And that nascent line of business needs a head who can coordinate the efforts of an array of teams — engineers, marketers, salespeople, product managers and more — to grow and develop the unit into a smoothly running outfit that will serve some of the company’s biggest clients. Shape and grow a new business? Shoot, that’s the kind of gig careers are made on. If you’ve got ed and ed-tech knowhow and a highly developed managerial skillset, you definitely want your hat in the ring for this one.

Nitty Gritty

Top-down, this gig begins with your development of a strategic vision for the unit, to be expressed in an operational roadmap for which you’ll elicit buy-in from all interested parties. You’ll recruit talent (both initially and ongoing). Once things get rolling, of course, you’ll oversee day-to-day operations, seeing to it that all the teams understand the part they’re to play and are executing according to plan. You’ll mentor teams. You’ll have your own P&L, with all its attendant responsibilities: managing a budget, doing monthly reporting, monitoring utilization, and hitting your targets for both revenue and profit.

Given the variety of teams within your remit, you’ll wear plenty of hats as you make your rounds: helping to develop sales and marketing strategies; helping Dev Ops people figure out how best to implement digital product solutions in the classroom; supporting product and tech teams in customizing solutions for specific customers; managing the sales pipeline and writing proposals and closing deals.

Hired Gun Profile

The above description is a lot, and we know it. We know fully well that it calls for a lightning-quick ability to take in tons of information, much of it quite technical, synthesize it on the fly, and make smart decisions. Put another way, it requires an unusually flexible mind, one that’s able to plunge into the weeds and then emerge seeing the big picture. But that’s you all the way, right?

It’s crucial that you have a real belief in, and experience with, both education (classroom experience would be dandy) and ed-tech (experience managing ed-tech products would be swell).

With so many teams and people-types to manage (quite spread out geographically, by the way), this calls for an extremely sociable and authentic personality, someone naturally gifted in establishing esprit de corps and getting everyone pulling in the same direction. On top of that, you’ve got a natural gravitas and executive polish such that you’re able to sit across from the big guns (internally and externally) and interact collegially. It should also be obvious that you’ll need real managerial experience, since there’s too much immediate heavy-lifting to do for you to try to learn how to manage workers and a P&L on the fly.

Finally, if you’re right now rubbing your hands together and thinking, “I’ll make this business the most profitable line in the company. And then I’ll ____________” [insert grandiose ambition], then you are exactly, exactly of the right mind for this gig.

Inside Skinny

If you’re curious about what to err on the side of over-emphasizing, it’s your past experience in managing complex operations.

Net Net
For a true ed tech thinker with unusual organizational smarts, this gig is a golden opportunity for limitless career growth.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, creed, age, sexual orientation, veteran status, marital status, disability, or any other status protected by applicable law.