Advanced Specialist, Strategy (Education Market Strategy)

Advanced Specialist, Strategy — Career Ready Workforce Programming

(Market aligned with Manager / Sr. Manager roles in Product Strategy, Market Intelligence, and Commercial Strategy in Education Technology and Workforce Learning)

At Pearson, we believe learning should open doors at every stage of life. Pearson’s Career Ready portfolio is focused on helping colleges and universities deliver workforce-aligned learning programs that support adult learners, career advancement, and employer needs.

We are building a new business focused on workforce programming distributed through higher education partners. This role is the strategic intelligence engine behind that launch — the resident expert on the market, the customer, and the end user, translating deep research and analytical rigor into the product and commercial decisions that will determine whether this business succeeds.

What You Will Do

You will develop and own the market, customer, and competitive expertise that shapes both the product roadmap and the commercial strategy for Pearson’s Career Ready HED workforce programming. This role is analytically rigorous and deeply cross-functional. You will work in close partnership with the Head of Sales, product management, and content development teams to ensure every major decision is grounded in real market evidence.

You will:

• Own market and user intelligence for the Career Ready HED workforce product — conducting desktop research, competitive landscape analysis, customer interviews, and formal research studies to develop a comprehensive understanding of the adult learner, university partner, and employer customer segments
• Translate market and user insights into clear product requirements and prioritization guidance, partnering directly with product management and content development to inform the direction of the product roadmap and feature decisions
• Develop and own the commercial strategy for the HED workforce product, including pricing architecture, packaging, and positioning — ensuring our go-to-market approach reflects both market realities and Pearson’s commercial objectives
• Partner with the Head of Sales to define geographic and segment prioritization — identifying which regions, university partnership profiles, and workforce development relationships should be sequenced first to maximize launch momentum
• Build the analytical frameworks and decision tools that help the commercial and product teams prioritize confidently in an ambiguous, early-stage environment
• Work cross-functionally across Pearson’s Career Ready, Higher Education, and Enterprise Learning teams to identify and unlock existing commercial and product capabilities that can accelerate go-to-market for the new workforce product
• Bring together the right internal stakeholders and resources at the right moments — acting as an internal connective tissue role that ensures the launch benefits from Pearson’s full institutional scale
• Track and synthesize signals from early university partner and user engagement to continuously refine the product and commercial strategy as the business moves from concept to market

What Success Looks Like

Success in this role means turning market complexity into clear, confident direction for both the product and commercial teams.

You will be successful if you:

• Develop a well-documented, evidence-based view of the HED adult workforce market — including sizing, customer segmentation, competitive dynamics, and unmet needs — that becomes the shared foundation for all major product and commercial decisions
• Own a pricing and packaging model grounded in customer research, competitive benchmarking, and Pearson’s commercial objectives that the sales team can execute with confidence
• Deliver a prioritized geographic and segment launch strategy that gives the sales team a clear, rationalized starting point for university partner outreach
• Identify and activate internal Pearson resources, partnerships, and capabilities that meaningfully accelerate the product’s path to market
• Establish a repeatable research and insight function that keeps the product and commercial strategy continuously calibrated to market reality as the business scales

This role requires someone who thrives at the intersection of analytical depth and commercial impact — someone who can turn research into strategy and strategy into clear decisions that teams can act on.

What Will Challenge You

This is an incubation-stage business inside a large organization. That means you will need to:

• Build structured analytical approaches where no prior framework exists
• Develop credibility with multiple internal stakeholder groups — product, sal