Product Manager

Alma Technologies • Full-time • Hybrid in Portland, Oregon, United States • 4h ago

Fast Facts

Alma is seeking a Product Manager to enhance its K-12 Student Information System by focusing on user needs and compliance. The ideal candidate is a proactive problem solver and effective communicator, ready to work within a distributed team.

Responsibilities: Manage the product life cycle, connect with stakeholders, identify customer problems, ensure compliance, document requirements, and collaborate with design and engineering teams to deliver impactful solutions.

Skills: Strong communication, problem-solving abilities, experience with K-12 EdTech products, user research, and familiarity with data visualization tools.

Qualifications: Experience from a K-12 educational context or technology background, including familiarity with educational data standards and previous work in product management.

Location: Portland, OR

Compensation: Not provided by employer. Typical compensation ranges for this position are between $100,000 - $130,000.

The Opportunity

Alma is a K-12 Student Information System that empowers educators to work more effectively through time savings, data insights, and community connection between home and school.

Our products balance user needs, educational best practices, and state/government compliance requirements. We are looking for a Product Manager who is energized by a mission-driven environment, isn’t afraid to get into the weeds, and can make complex concepts feel simple. Ideal candidates are proactive problem solvers and clear communicators.

This position can be from our headquarters in Portland, Oregon. You’ll be working as part of a distributed team that operates across the Pacific and Mountain time zones.

Responsibilities

As a Product Manager with Alma, you will be involved in every aspect of the product development process. You will design experiences across our application to impact educators, administrators, students, and their families. At Alma, you can expect to:

Connect with current users, prospects, and other stakeholders to learn about their needs and goals, and conduct market research.
Identify problems we can solve for our customers aligned with the business goals, and work with product managers and engineers to define, plan, and implement solutions.
Manage the whole product life cycle and facilitate inter-departmental communication to execute the company vision.
Own compliance documentation as a first-class responsibility - dig into state and federal regulatory requirements, partner closely with the State Reporting Services team, and ensure product decisions account for the full compliance landscape.
Clearly document requirements: write problem statements, solution goals, user stories, and solution options, and illustrate product flows and wireframes. Documentation is part of the work, not separate from it - requirements, decisions, and handoffs are consistently written down.
Be able to explain the same concept, solution, and benefits to multiple different audiences inside the company (design, engineering, sales, marketing, customer engagement) and outside (buyers, end users, and school/district administrators).
Work closely with designers and engineers during the design and build processes to gauge feasibility and scope. Alma engineering teams rotate across workstreams - you will need to bring strong context and clarity to each handoff.
Monitor how features are used in production and iterate on features as needed to achieve goals.
Regularly present your work internally and externally for alignment and feedback.
Continuously improve research, documentation, handoff, feedback, and iteration processes for efficiency, scalability, and sustainability as the company grows.
Operate as a capable, independent peer to other product managers on the team - able to cover workstreams and make decisions without relying on constant cross-PM alignment.

Qualities / Experiences We Are Looking For

All applicants:

You can get yourself up to speed quickly in new problem spaces and knowledge domains.
You can clearly convey your thoughts verbally, visually, and in writing.
You are a flexible thinker and can help generate multiple disparate solutions to a given problem at the early stages of a project.
You demonstrate curiosity, resourcefulness, and empathy.
You are self-motivated, and can empower others; you can prioritize multiple milestones and deliverables effectively.

Those coming from a technology background:

You’ve previously designed, shipped, and iterated on entire features, ideally in an K-12 Edtech software or enterprise SaaS business.
You have conducted qualitative research, such as user interviews and usability tests.
You can create wireframes and process flows in tools like Whimsical, Miro, Balsamiq, or Figma.
You have elegantly solved complex workflows and shipped features that use data visualization to drive insight and action.

Those coming from an education background:

Previous experience in a K-12 school, district, or state education agency as a school or district tech director, reporting manager / compliance officer, special education coordinator, RTI / MTSS coordinator, or assessments manager
Familiarity with typical educational data exchange standards such as Ed-Fi, SIF OneRoster, and LTI, and/or administering Student Information Systems or Learning Management Systems.
Experience with special education data workflows, IEP processes, or state special education reporting requirements is a meaningful advantage for this role.
You have used data to create insights for your colleagues and to monitor data quality and/or student progress.

Bonus Qualifications

Previous experience working on Enterprise products.
Experience using Business Intelligence / Data Visualization tools such as Tableau, PowerBI, or Looker Studio.
Demonstrated use of AI tools to improve documentation, research, or workflow efficiency.

How We Work:

When working as a Product Manager at Alma, you will: Work with a distributed team across Pacific and Mountain time zones.
Collaborate with designers, engineers, reporting analysts, and others via documents, Slack, Whimsical, Figma, Jira tickets, and frequent video calls.
Partner with a rotating engineering team - Alma does not operate pod-based dedicated engineering. Strong documentation and clear requirements handoffs are essential to making this model work well.
Join daily standups, weekly team and 1:1 meetings, monthly company all-hands, and as-needed project-specific meetings.
Interview users/stakeholders via video conference weekly (except maybe when they’re on summer vacation)

Who We Are:

Alma is a cloud-based student information system (SIS) that serves K-12 administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Our Product team is small and mission-driven. We serve schools and districts across the US and internationally and aim to improve education by empowering the most significant learning resource students have at school: educators.

As individuals, we take ownership of our roles and responsibilities. As a team, our solutions have both an educational & societal impact, and we take that very seriously. We are agile, fast-paced, evolving, and determined to make a difference.

The students, parents, and educators Alma serves come from every walk of life: they attend public, private, and charter schools in cities, suburbs, and rural areas. Our users include English language learners, people with disabilities, gender minorities, families experiencing housing instability, and students who will be the first in their families to go to college.

It is fundamental to Alma’s mission that we continue to build a team with diverse lived experiences and perspectives to anticipate better and serve all students' needs. To that end, we hire for culture add over culture fit, and strive to create an environment where all team members' voices are heard and welcomed. In addition, we are committed to maintaining a workplace where people can be themselves each day.

All Alma team members receive health benefits, a retirement account, significant paid time off and paid holidays, and a competitive base salary.

A Note to Applicants:

Studies have shown that people from historically underestimated groups are less likely to apply for jobs unless they believe they meet every one of the qualifications described in a job description. We know from experience and past hires that the best person for this role will likely not check every box listed here. We encourage you to apply, even if you don't believe you meet all the qualifications described.

Alma Technologies is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We evaluate qualified applicants regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other protected characteristics.

To Apply:

Please apply through JazzHR. In your application, please point us to some piece of media (article, book, video, social media post, podcast, etc.) that has shaped how you think about your work as a product manager or educator and how it has changed your approach to the job.

Reference checks will be part of your application process but do not need to be provided upfront.