Job Description

SUMMARY: We’re looking for a Product Leader who is energized by ownership of outcomes, not output. Your job isn’t to write the most thorough spec; it’s to figure out the right problem to solve, define what winning looks like, and partner with engineering and design to ship something real that moves the needle for our users.

At Tallo, you’ll shape products for students figuring out their futures, people exploring apprenticeships and alternative pathways, and workers building new skills without going back to school. We believe talent is equally distributed but opportunity is not… and your work helps close that gap.

This role sits at the center of a small, fast-moving team where engineers and designers own a lot. We need a product thinker who can turn fuzzy user needs into clear bets, rally a team around them, and learn fast.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS: Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential duties.

• Own the “why” and the “what.” Translate user needs and business goals into a clearly-framed problem and a crisp definition of success, and then guide the team in owning the “how.”

• Collaborate with other product leaders to define the metric that matters. Set the outcome you’re driving toward, instrument it, and measure success by user behavior change over features shipped.

• Work lightweight. Use story maps, one-pagers, and just-enough framing to align the team. We favor working software over comprehensive documentation; you won’t get extra credit for writing exhaustive PRDs or hand-detailing acceptance criteria if it’s not actually used by developers and designers.

• Partner directly with engineers and designers. Collaborate in real time, every day.

• Push for experimentation and validation. Form hypotheses, design the smallest test that produces real learning, and adapt based on evidence.

• Ship true MVPs. Know the difference between a real minimum viable test and a watered-down v1. Get something in front of users quickly, then improve.

• Prioritize ruthlessly. Protect the team’s capacity for high-leverage work. Say no to good in service of great, and kill work that won’t deliver value (without ego or sunk-cost thinking).

• Keep the user at the center. Stay close to real users, synthesize what you learn, and make sure every bet connects back to a user reaching a career milestone.

• Use AI as a tool. Lean on AI thoughtfully to move faster and sharpen your thinking, but not as a replacement for talking to users or good judgment.

Supervisory Responsibilities: This position has no formal supervisory responsibilities.

MINIMUM REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

· Five (5) years of relevant experience preferably in a combination of the areas below:

o Experience in ed-tech, career or college readiness, workforce, or two-sided marketplaces

o Enough technical fluency to partner closely with engineers (especially product engineers, who own more of the build)

o Experience on lean teams that ship without a dedicated product owner or scrum master, perhaps without dedicated QA

· A track record of owning product outcomes: you can point to a problem you framed, the metric you moved, and how you knew it worked.

· Fluency with metrics and experimentation: you’re comfortable defining success measures, reading data, and designing tests to validate (or kill) an idea.

· Comfort working lightweight: you can drive alignment with a story map or one-pager and don’t reach for a heavy process or a thick PRD by default.

· A genuinely collaborative style: you work shoulder-to-shoulder with engineers and designers, share work-in-progress early, and have no ego about whose idea wins.

· A bias to action: you move fast, learn fast, ship small slices, and are comfortable making decisions without a perfect spec.

· Strong product judgment: you can articulate the specific user problem you’re solving and why it matters, and you separate signal from noise.

· Clear communication: you convey the why, the bet, and the metric simply, and adapt your message to engineers, designers, leadership, and users.

· Ability to clear required background check

Certificates and Licenses: None required.

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

· Degree(s)

· Management experience

WORK ENVIRONMENT: The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

· This position is virtual and open to residents of the 50 states, D.C.

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS: Stride, Inc. considers a person’s education, experience, and qualifications, as well as the position’s work location, expected quality and quantity of work, required travel (if any), external market and internal value when determining a new employee’s salary level.  Salaries will differ based on these factors, the position’s level and expected contribution, and the employee’s benefits elections.  Offers will typically be in the bottom half of the range.  

We anticipate the salary range to be $84,457-$120,000.  Eligible employees may receive a bonus. This salary is not guaranteed, as an individual’s compensation can vary based on several factors.  These factors include, but are not limited to, geographic location, experience, training, education, and local market conditions. Stride offers a robust benefits package for eligible employees that can include health benefits, retirement contributions, and paid time off. 

The above job is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of duties and standards of the position. Incumbents will follow any other instructions, and perform any other related duties, as assigned by their supervisor. All employment is “at-will” as governed by the law of the state where the employee works. It is further understood that the “at-will” nature of employment is one aspect of employment that cannot be changed except in writing and signed by an authorized officer.

Job Type