Product Manager, Data and IT-Managed Services

Company Description

Uncommon Schools  is a nonprofit network of high-performing, public charter schools providing an outstanding K-12 education in historically under-resourced communities. We have proudly built schools that reflect our student population, with more than 60% of our teachers and staff across our network identifying as a person of color. Uncommon currently manages 53 schools serving more than 20,000 students in five cities: Boston, Camden, New York City, Newark and Rochester. We are proud that Uncommon graduates persist in and graduate from college at five times the rate of their peers nationally. We achieve this by offering strong academic, co-curricular, and social-emotional learning that prepares students for success in college and beyond.

Job Description

As a member of Uncommon’s Product Management Team, the Product Manager will own the Managed Service Providers workstream that will help ensure the team works independently toward achieving outcomes (not tasks) under minimal guidance. Accountable for performance management, support management, deliverables and obligations tracking, customer satisfaction surveys, vendor metrics, reporting, contract inquiries, budget and invoice management, and escalation management by directly managing vendor(s) responsible for the day-to-day operations of Uncommon's IT infrastructure and projects

Beyond technical knowledge, the Product Manager must have strong change management, planning, and communication skills in order to manage technology and processes at Uncommon’s scale and high standard. 

Oversee Uncommon’s IT Managed Service Providers (Ricoh, Inspiroz, etc):

• Manage Use Cases: Deeply understand stakeholders’ goals and use cases for IT (i.e. day-to-day and outage support, hardware maintenance, software licensing, etc.)
• Manage Summer Infrastructure Upgrades: Oversee Managed Service Provider in all school-based hardware and infrastructure projects and upgrades (i.e. new building tech outfitting, EOL and upgrades such as Servers, WAPs, WiFi, etc)
• Own Processes: Develop and manage the implementation of all processes for day-to-day (relationship management, performance management, issue management, vendor support management, deliverable and obligation tracking, executive and operational vendor reporting, and other governance activities)
• Support Policy: Work with Data Governance team to build, execute, and automate policy, including security, data governance, roles & permissions
• Troubleshoot & manage escalations: Troubleshoot & work with vendors to resolve escalations and outages
• Own the Service Improvement and Innovation Plans: Oversight of vendor service reviews and service improvement and innovation plans as necessary
• Contract, Payment & ERate: Contract management and financial management, as well as all E-Rate processes
• Manage Relationship: Build excellent relationships with vendors, act as liaison between vendor and Uncommon on any projects, and own school-level escalations & difficult conversations.

Manage Google Workspace (GW) for Education (e.g. Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Google Classroom, and more):

• Oversee the planning, prioritization and execution of the GW roadmap in partnership with team members who rely on GW functionality (such as Product Manager of EdTech). 
• Identify and escalate issues with technology partners and manufacturers.
• Independently create communication and change management plans internally driven shifts or Google-imposed changes
• Train IT Support team and outsourced partner to handle common issues
• Collaborate with IT team members to facilitate integrations with GW data sets

Vendor Management:

• Contract & Payment: Lead renewal and payment of yearly contracts, such as Verizon contract
• Manage Relationship: Establish relationships with vendors, act as the liaison between vendor and Uncommon on any projects, and own school-level issues & difficult conversations. 
• Partner concerns: Work with the Director to handle vendor issues 

Training and documentation:

• Knowledge Base: Own creation and management of all internal and school-facing Knowledge Base articles on support, troubleshooting, and best practices for the platform
• Training: Develop and Facilitate Training
• School facing: Develop and facilitate training for regional and/or school leaders, which they will turnkey to their staff 
• Data & IT: Help define and coordinate vendor-offered training sessions at the right level for those managing the Service Desk and Relationship Managers.
• Process Documentation: Work with regional/school Leaders to document existing processes related to supported applications (e.g. documentation of best practices for in-school tech management)

Organiza