Product Manager, Academic Services

Position Summary:

We are seeking a Product Manager to lead the Academic Services domain, which includes transcripts, transfer credit evaluation, grading tools, diploma access, and externship administration.  This role plays a pivotal part in improving how learners advance academically, receive timely feedback, and access critical academic records ultimately impacting persistence and completion rates.

You will own systems and workflows used by instructors, graders, transcript evaluators, externship coordinators, and learners.  Your work will streamline operations, reduce bottlenecks, maximize transfer credit opportunities, and improve the turnaround time of academic processes.

This role directly enhances the learner’s journey by ensuring academic services are reliable, fast, intuitive, and equitable.

Key Responsibilities:

Define the product roadmap for transcripts, transfer credit evaluation, grading tools, diploma retrieval, and externship workflows.

Ensure academic processes are seamless for learners and efficient for staff.

Reduce the time from transcript submission to evaluation and credit award.

Identify opportunities to increase the volume and accuracy of transfer credits.

Explore intelligent automation and AI-assisted evaluation models.

Partner closely with instructors, graders, transcript evaluators, and academic operations teams to uncover their pain points.

Improve tools such as EduGrade and grading interfaces to enhance speed, clarity, and quality of feedback.

Streamline externship administration workflows, ensuring learners know where they stand and what to do next.

Improve: transcript evaluation turnaround time, transfer credit accuracy, grading timeliness, externship placement/evaluation workflows, and completion rates by accelerating learner progress.

Use data and stakeholder insight to determine which improvements matter most.

Focus on initiatives that accelerate learner progress or remove friction from critical academic processes.

Navigate tradeoffs across competing priorities with transparency and strong communication.

Write well-structured user stories and acceptance criteria grounded in problem statements.

Collaborate with Engineering in backlog refinement, solutioning, and sprint planning.

Work cross-functionally with Academic Leadership, Engineering, Design, and Data partners.

Qualifications:

3-6+ years of product management experience.

Strong systems thinker with experience improving operational or staff-facing tools.

Demonstrated ability to break down complex academic or operational workflows.

Skilled in writing user stories, epics, and acceptance criteria; familiar with Agile practices.

Strong analytical mindset, able to define metrics and measure impact on academic outcomes.

Excellent collaboration and communication skills across technical and non-technical partners.

Nice to Have:

Experience with transcript evaluation tools or academic record systems.

Familiarity with workflow automation or AI-assisted evaluation tools.

Experience with the Atlassian suite (Jira, Confluence).

Background in higher education or operationally complex environments.

Equal Employment Opportunity:

At Penn Foster Group we are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We are committed to creating a work environment that embraces and celebrates diversity. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military service, or other status protected under federal, state, or local law.

What We Offer: We offer a competitive base salary and incentive compensation, plus a robust benefits package that includes medical, dental, vision, flexible spending, generous paid time off, sponsored volunteer opportunities, a 401K with a company match, plus free access to all our online programs.