Associate Director, Program ManagementRemote, United States
At Curriculum Associates (CA), we believe a diverse team leads to innovations that help educators and students succeed. We are seeking an experienced Associate Director, Program Management to lead large, cross-functional programs that bring high-quality instructional products and services to market. In this role, you will drive alignment across Product, Engineering, Content, Design, Marketing, Customer Success, and other Go-to-Market (GTM) teams to ensure programs deliver on our strategic objectives and meet the needs of the educators and students we serve.
The impact you'll have: - Lead the successful delivery of complex, multi-year programs that advance CA's product strategy and organizational goals
- Translate vision into clear program outcomes, milestones, timelines, and success measures
- Bring clarity and structure to ambiguous situations, helping teams align on priorities and decisions
- Strengthen the connection between Product and GTM teams to ensure clear communication, organizational readiness, and cohesive deliverables throughout the product lifecycle
- Drive continuous improvement in program management methodologies, tools, and standards across the company
What you'll do: Program Leadership - Initiate, define, and socialize program goals in alignment with organizational strategy
- Build and manage the integrated program plan, ensuring coordination, transparency, and accountability across teams
- Lead programs through the full product development lifecycle-including Discovery, Definition, Development, and Launch-ensuring clarity of scope, timelines, and deliverables at each stage.
- Facilitate phase transitions and checkpoints; ensure teams are aligned with requirements, acceptance criteria, and readiness expectations.
- Oversee multiple workstreams and ensure balance of scope, time, cost, and quality
- Identify, manage, and mitigate risks, issues, and interdependencies
- Ensure accurate and timely documentation and reporting-including timelines, decision logs, risk registers, and program updates
Cross-Functional Collaboration - Maintain open, collaborative, and solution-oriented communication with stakeholders at all levels
- Drive alignment between Product, Engineering, Content, Design, and GTM teams; proactively synthesize complex information and ensure clarity across groups
- Facilitate decision-making processes and ensure shared understanding of tradeoffs and priorities
- Build trusted relationships that foster cross-team collaboration and accountability
Go-to-Market (GTM) Partnership - Partner closely with Product Marketing, Customer Success, Sales, Professional Learning, and Operations teams to ensure organizational readiness for product launches and major milestones
- Collaborate with Product and Engineering teams to ensure downstream teams understand feature intent, customer value, and milestone timing throughout the development cycle
- Ensure GTM partners are engaged early in the product development process and prepared for launch through clear timelines, messaging, and resource planning
- Provide downstream teams with clear visibility into timelines, feature sets, risk areas, and program decisions
- Anticipate GTM needs and ensure proactive planning for messaging, implementation pathways, training, and customer-facing collateral
- Serve as a connector across Product and GTM functions to promote consistent communication, aligned expectations, and coordinated execution
Team Leadership & Operational Excellence - Manage and develop a team of program managers, providing coaching, guidance, and professional growth opportunities
- Define and champion program management best practices, templates, tools, and metrics across the organization
- Identify opportunities to improve processes, streamline workflows, and increase operational efficiency
- Capture and disseminate lessons learned to strengthen future programs
What we're looking for: - 7+ years of program or project management experience leading large, cross-functional programs
- Demonstrated success partnering with GTM functions such as marketing, sales, enablement, and customer-facing teams
- Experience managing products or programs through the full development lifecycle-from early discovery through launch and post-launch iteration
- Strong understanding of software development processes, content development workflows, or combined hardware/software/content ecosystems
- Excellent strategic thinking, analytical skills, and structured problem-solving abilities
- Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, including the ability to influence without authority
- Proven ability to navigate ambiguity and bring clarity and stability to complex situations
- Strong organizational skills with a bias toward action, follow-through, and accountability
- Experience using modern program management tools (e.g., Jira, Asana, Smartsheet, Confluence)
- Prior people-management experience leading project or program managers
- A collaborative, low ego working style aligned with CA's mission and values
- Experience in EdTech, Educational Publishing, SaaS, or other technology-enabled product environments strongly preferred
