Product Manager

Chicago, Illinois (remote)
Product /
Full-time /
Remote
About Empowerly

Empowerly (www.empowerly.com) is an education technology company with a mission to empower students to become the most successful version of themselves. We personalize college and career counseling, offering data-driven education technology, startup and research internship programs, and personalized counseling led by former college Admission Officers and experienced college counselors. We are a rapidly growing, mission-driven, and venture-backed company that values collaboration, data-driven decision-making, and empowerment.

Empowerly raised $30 million from investors, including Goodwater Capital, Conductive Ventures, FJ Labs, Scrum Ventures, Translink Capital, Azure Capital Partners, and Spero Ventures. Our leadership team brings experience from Teach for America, Goldman Sachs, Facebook, Google, Lucky Strike, Microsoft, and various Seed, A, B, C, Private, and Publicly Traded companies. In 2022, Empowerly's co-founders were named in Forbes 30 Under 30, and the company was recognized as one of Inc. 5000's fastest-growing companies in America.

About the Role

We are seeking an agile Product Manager to join our team. In this role, you will be at the forefront of developing and enhancing products that meet and exceed our customers' needs. Your responsibilities will range from understanding user challenges to working hands-on with engineering teams – both front-end and back-end technologies. This position offers the opportunity to work in a collaborative, fast-paced environment and make a significant impact on our product offerings.

Responsibilities

    • Manage your project end-to-end, including design, code, and feedback
    • Learn about building a platform that scales quickly while maintaining quality and security
    • Strong ability to translate your technical capabilities in a product manager role from both sides – our customers, clients and engineers.
    • You are able to make complex topics simple and clearly communicate nuance to stakeholders (engineers, customers, field, etc.) in both written and verbal form 
    • You are excited to solve ambiguous problems with a collaborative team
    • You will work closely with a distributed Engineering Team and remote teams located across the United States and Brazil, fostering a collaborative and inclusive environment.
    • You will understand basic UI/UX. Specifically, iIdentify and address key challenges faced by our users, ensuring that our product solutions are tailored to meet their needs effectively.
    • The product manager will work with an engineering team that does front end development – focusing on creating intuitive and responsive Web UIs using technologies such as React and Redux, and Mobile UIs using React Native.
    • The product manager will also work with an engineering team that develops Empowerly APIs using Node and Express, managing our Messaging Service in TypeScript, and contributing to Machine Learning workflows with Python.
    • This is a critical hire and with a focus on the execution and iteration of our product strategy, focusing on both short-term and long-term goals – including sprints to ensure that our product roadmap aligns with the company's vision.

Requirements

    • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
    • Proven experience in product management, particularly in a technology-focused company.
    • Clearly communicate complex technical requirements in a simple, easily understandable way, akin to explaining them to a tiny human
    • Excellent problem-solving skills and a user-centric approach to product development.
    • Ability to work collaboratively in a distributed team environment.
    • Strong communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into simple terms for diverse audiences.
    • Willingness to learn and adapt in a fast-paced and dynamic work environment.
    • Comfortable working in a startup setting
    • Strong analytical skills, including the ability to derive insights from raw data

Preferred Qualifications

    • Possess an undergraduate and/or graduate degree from a Top 50 undergraduate institution
    • Knowledge of B2C marketplaces
    • Have an understanding of with college preparation, application, and admission processes

$80,000 - $110,000 a year
We carefully consider a wide range of compensation factors. We rely on market indicators to determine compensation and consider your specific job, skills, and experience to get it right. These considerations can cause your compensation to vary and will also be dependent on your location.

This role is a full-time, exempt position working remotely. We also offer a competitive benefits package that includes health/dental/vision insurance, unlimited pto and sick days, and a 401k. In addition to our tangible benefits, Empowerly provides on-the-job development experiences with the ability to learn and grow within a supportive team environment.
Working at Empowerly

At Empowerly, we value versatility, supportiveness, impatience, and above all, an obsessive focus on deepening relationships with families. As you join us in the first chapter of our story, you'll play a leading role in determining how it unfolds.

We understand that finding a company with values that align with your own is crucial to feeling fulfilled at work. However, it can be challenging to assess a company's culture from the outside, and many organizations struggle to describe their own nature accurately. It's like asking a fish to describe water - they are so immersed in it that it's hard to see it objectively. Additionally, many companies have incentives to sound attractive rather than truthful.

That's why we've made a conscious effort to articulate our culture's characteristics honestly. We hope that this description will help you decide whether Empowerly is the kind of place where you'd like to spend your time.

- Fast-paced, detail-oriented
- Growth by way of doing
- Voraciously curious
- Healthcare, Dental, Vision, 401-K
- Working to scale our Benefits
- Flexible PTO
- Remote