Principal, Program Manager

Principle, Program Manager

Content Excellence (AI & Content Technology)

The Role

Pearson is reimagining how learning content is created and delivered in the age of AI. As part of that work, the Content Excellence team is driving a broad transformation agenda focused on building a faster, more scalable, and more future-ready content development model—combining modern product thinking, AI-enabled workflows, and strong content operations.

We are seeking a strategic program manager to work in close partnership with the Head of Content Excellence on one of the company’s most ambitious transformation efforts. The successful candidate will frame the agenda, structure ambiguous problems, develop options and tradeoffs, and drive alignment and decisions with senior stakeholders. S/he will also take ownership of select priorities, translating strategy into pragmatic action and measurable outcomes across content, product, and technology teams.

What You'll Own

In this role, you will work directly with the Head of Content Excellence to shape the transformation agenda—clarifying the “north star,” surfacing the highest-leverage opportunities, and sharpening strategic choices. You create and facilitate the governance, communication, and decision forums that keep priorities crisp, leaders aligned, and outcomes measurable.

You will have the opportunity to propose and lead initiatives within the broader transformation portfolio—from early diagnosis and problem definition through recommendation, decision, and delivery. This may include defining future-state ways of working, shaping operating model choices, building business cases and success metrics, and directly architecting and piloting AI-enabled processes.

You will play an enterprise-facing role: building trust with senior stakeholders and creating clear communication and alignment mechanisms across the 2000-strong content development workforce. You will help ensure the right conversations happen in the right forums—and that they result in crisp decisions, committed owners, and follow-through.

This role combines strategic problem-solving with pragmatic follow-through. You will be expected to bring structure to ambiguity, synthesize complex inputs into clear points of view, and communicate recommendations in executive-ready formats (e.g., decision memos, concise narratives, option/tradeoff framing).

Key Responsibilities

· Serve as a close thought partner to the Head of Content Excellence—framing the agenda, structuring ambiguous problems, and advancing high-stakes decisions.

· Develop executive-ready recommendations on strategy and operating questions (workflow transformation, AI enablement, capability building, change approach, and operating model design), including clear options and tradeoffs.

· Design and run communication, governance and decision forums that drive alignment and accountability across all functions involved in content development at Pearson.

· Produce and drive key strategic artifacts (decision memos, executive narratives, prioritization/roadmap framing, KPI & measurement approach, and investment cases) that enable faster, higher-quality decisions.

· Own selected initiatives end-to-end—from diagnosis through delivery and outcome—ensuring work is viable organizationally and produces measurable impact.

· Support the evaluation and application of AI tools and emerging practices to our work via hands-on experimentation (workflow pilots, prompt/tooling patterns), measuring impact, and scaling what works.

· Represent the Head of Content Excellence in meetings and stakeholder discussions; build alignment, resolve key dependencies, and move decisions forward.

· Bring appropriate rigor to execution where needed (clarifying ownership, surfacing risks and tradeoffs, and maintaining momentum) as an enabler of strategic outcomes—not as the center of the role.

About You

You are unusually strong for your career stage: sharp, credible, fast-learning, and comfortable operating in environments where the answers are not obvious and the stakes are high.

You likely come from consulting, corporate strategy, transformation, product operations, chief-of-staff, or a similarly demanding cross-functional environment—with credible exposure to content development workflows and the technologies that support them. You are not simply an organizer—you are someone who can form a point of view, structure tradeoffs, influence senior leaders, and translate strategy into focused, measurable execution.

You are strong interpersonally and know ho