Project Manager

Project Manager

Job ID: 2013-17319
# of Positions: 2
Posted Date: 9/19/2013
Job Location: US-NY-New York
Position Type: Regular Full Time
Category: Project Management

Overview

Pearson has one defining goal: to help people progress in their lives through learning. We champion innovation and we invest in models for education that deliver on our promise for effective, accessible, and personal learning from early literacy, college and career readiness to professional education, through data informed instruction and inventive applications for mobile and digital learning.

Pearson, the world's leading learning company, has global-reach and market leading businesses in education, business, and consumer publishing and is listed on the London and New York stock exchanges (UK: PSON; NYSE: PSO).

Pearson is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer, and a member of E-Verify. All qualified applicants, including minorities, women, veterans, and people with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

Why Pearson

Pearson is a global education company that helps people around the world make progress in their lives through learning. Our work aims to solve some of the most important challenges in education, empowering individuals and building communities.

Our K12 Technology division has the power to transform education by allowing us to reach billions of learners on our products. We are a truly global, digital and impact-driven learning team. We provide the essential, world-class technology, tools and services that both learners and school systems need to personalize and improve learning on a global scale.

Why we need you

We need bright and talented people who can help us solve the biggest and most intractable problems in global education. By working at Pearson, you will have a unique chance to make a real difference to the lives of people all over the world and be part of a team who grasps a once-in-a-generation opportunity within one of the world's great growth industries.

The Project

Most of the schools in the United States have adopted a new set of academic standards to better prepare children for college and careers. These are known at the Common Core State Standards. As schools gear up to meet the new standards, Pearson is undertaking a bold project to replace textbooks with fully digital, mobile, data-driven instructional programs to meet the challenges of the new Common Core State standards. From a tablet or laptop, with Pearson's Common Core System of Courses, students and teachers will have all the materials they need to engage in the next generation of teaching and learning.

Pearson K-12 Technology is actively seeking a Project Manager/Scrum Master to join us in a full time role. This individual will be responsible for project management in support of Pearson's effort to build a digital, basal curriculum based on the new Common Core standards, and may include acting as a Scrum Masters for one or more teams. As such this individual will be responsible for facilitating an agile based software development team consisting of development, QA, and user experience team members. Qualified candidates will have thoroughly enjoyed working as a project manager in the past and be passionate about supporting an expert team to create great software. This position will report to the Program Manager and based in our New York City office.

Responsibilities
- Work with product management, technical and user experience teams
to prioritize the product roadmap in support of release goals
- Work with the teams to set incremental goals and project manage across the cross functional teams to achieve these goals within designated timeframes
- Facilitate discussion and conflict resolution within and across
teams and project stakeholders
- Communicate status of project via weekly reports, presentations, and project plans; improve transparency as to project status and radiate
information
- Scrum Master responsibilities include but are not limited to:
- Organize and facilitate project planning, daily scrum meetings,
reviews, retrospectives, sprint and release planning, demos and otherScrum-related meetings
- Ensure team is practicing the core agile principles of collaboration, prioritization, team accountability, and visibility
- Assist team with making appropriate commitments through story
selection, point estimation and task definition
- Travel required: Up to 50%

Qualifications
- 2+ years project management experience
- 5+ years experience on a software development team
- Certified Scrum Master with Scrum Master experience a plus
- Self-starter with strong creative problem solving, facilitation
and interpersonal skills
- Great project management and organizational skills
- Excellent communication skills both written and oral
- Ability to manage up and across teams/stakeholders
- Flexible attitude and a desire to take on large challenging projects
- Bachelors Degree required, MBA a plus
- Knowledge of and experience in the K-12 and/or education technology industry preferred, but not required

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