Product Management Director – Discovery & Strategy

About Pearson At Pearson, we are committed to helping people make progress in their lives through learning. We create innovative and accessible educational products and services that foster personal and professional growth. We are looking for a passionate and skilled Product Director to join our team and drive the development of cutting-edge educational products.

About the Job We embrace an SVPG-inspired Product Operating Model, empowering our product teams to solve hard problems – customer problems and business problems – in ways that our customers love, yet work for our business. Product companies depend on strong products, and strong products come from strong product teams. And we recognise that product teams are only as strong as their product managers. 

The Product Excellence team brings together exceptional product leaders to tackle Pearson's most complex challenges, while transforming how we build products. We're on a mission to create the capabilities, culture, and operating model that empower product teams to consistently deliver breakthrough outcomes for learners and the business.

Position Overview 

We're seeking an innovative and highly experienced Product Management Director to lead product strategy and product delivery initiatives across our product portfolio, with a strong lens on customer discovery and experience design. This role combines deep expertise in Product Management with user research, design thinking and a coaching mindset to accelerate transformation initiatives, strengthen discovery practices, and build capabilities across teams. A key requirement for this role is experience of taking innovative products from “0-1”.

Key Responsibilities

Product Leadership & Strategy

• Work with product, engineering and design teams to deliver innovative products and features to market, backed by rigorous user research and market analysis
• Embed into business units to develop customer-centric roadmaps, compelling business cases and product strategy
• Coach teams to develop high-quality MRDs, PRDs, and integrate discovery insights into product backlogs and roadmaps
• Drive excellence reviews and continuous improvement following roadmap reviews and strategic planning cycles

Discovery & Experience Design

• Own and drive initiatives with product and engineering teams to enhance user experience and find product-market-fit.
• Lead and facilitate design sprints to rapidly validate ideas and solve complex user problems
• Coach product managers and designers on advanced prototyping, iterative user testing, and insight synthesis methodologies
• Run hands-on discovery sessions with teams, modelling best practices in user research and validation

Product Excellence & Coaching

• Execute player-coach model: hands-on discovery work to guide teams through complex strategic decisions using evidence-based discovery insights
• Coach teams to seamlessly integrate discovery practices into agile development processes – driving adoption of ‘2 track’ delivery and discovery
• Lead targeted interventions to strengthen product strategy and user-centric thinking across organizations
• Facilitate training on discovery methods, design thinking, and strategic product planning

Strategic Initiatives

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of product management experience with demonstrable expertise in customer centric product strategy and product delivery
• Strong background in experience design , ‘0-1’ product building and related strategic disciplines
• Proven track record facilitating design sprints and leading discovery initiatives
• Deep understanding of product sense and developing customer-backed business cases that drive prototyping, user testing and insight synthesis
• Experience building strategic product roadmaps informed by rigorous user research

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree in Design, Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction, or related field
• Successful experience leading product delivery in the context of transformation in complex organizations
• Domain expertise in learning technologies and educational product development
• Background in design research, ethnography, or behavioural science
• Strong facilitation skills and experience building discovery communities of practice

What You'll Love About This Role

• Shape the future o