Director Product Operations (Hybrid)

About Walden University

Walden University, an Adtalem Global Education institution, supports a diverse community of adult learners from across the U.S. and other countries, who seek to achieve their academic goals and make positive, lasting social change in their professions and communities. Walden is a B Corporation with a mission to provide a diverse community of career professionals who have the opportunity to transform themselves as scholar-practitioners to positively affect social change. Walden offers more than 100 online degree and certificate programs, for students pursuing a bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral or certificate. Walden University has graduated more than 174,000 students and is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.

Visit WaldenU.edu for more information, and follow on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

 

Overview

Reporting directly to Walden University’s VP, Product, the Director, Product Operations will partner with functional area leaders and product managers to lead and coordinate all efforts across the company related to high impact, cross-functional strategic initiatives that include new/upgraded/retired products or services and non-program-related strategic initiatives. This individual will effectively manage multiple projects at any given time and work collaboratively across the organization in order to launch new or upgraded products or services, retire products or services, or strategic initiatives to meet both the business and students’ needs. This individual will standardize and streamline launch and launch-related communications across the organization as well as maintain and update the product roadmap and documentation on processes, guidelines, and other critical materials to facilitate accurate communication and create significant time savings for the entire Product Group. This individual will provide leadership to the product operations team tasked with evaluating, adopting, and implementing business best practices and technologies to deliver exceptional customer experience that impact the company’s bottom line.

This role is considered hybrid, which means you’ll be assigned to our Chicago office and given the flexibility to work remotely. We are looking for someone to be on-site 3 days a week. 

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Drives product development strategy by keeping functional areas and teams aligned on agreed-upon milestones to ensure effective delivery of revenue and profitability.
• Creatively develops and refines strategic project launch plans when adjustments to deadlines and milestones are required.
• Manages tools and resources (e.g. road mapping, prototyping) to ensure they are aligned with development strategy and can meet objectives.
• Develop business processes to streamline launch.
• Works collaboratively with functional areas leads and teams to proactively address bottlenecks and delivery problems; adjusts processes and resource allocation accordingly.
• Drives innovation for product enhancements and new product concepts by identifying, implementing, and monitoring continuous process improvements.
• Communicates with leadership and stakeholders the project plan, outlining goals, timelines, deliverables, obstacles, and dependencies needed to ensure a successful launch.
• Develops and ensure timely, audience-appropriate strategic communication to internally reduce downtime and to externally increase visibility and success of products.
• Serves as a key point of contact for performance tracking against roadmap; develops and implements comprehensive dashboards to track and measure progress.
• Leads, coaches, and mentors team members to ensure effective and efficient deployment of resources and ongoing professional development; Manage team capacity and resource allocation while accurately evaluating performance of team members and providing direct and actionable feedback.
• Enable the operations team to improve processes and policies in support of organizational goals. Monitor adherence to rules, regulations, and procedures.
• Completes other duties as assigned

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree required. Master’s Degree in an appropriate field preferred.
• 7 to 10 years of demonstrated experience in product/portfolio development or management, preferably in an educational publishing environment required.
• PMP certification, Lean Six Sigma certification, Agile or SAFe Project Management certification or training is preferred.
• Familiarity with Pragmatic Institute Framework is preferred.
• Experience leading and mentoring individuals within a fast-paced, matrixed environment.
• Proven track record in driving successful change and business transformations.
• History with on-time, on-budget delivery of multiple large scale multi-million-dollar projects.
• Demonstrated strong oral and written communication with the ability to tailor communication message and style for the appropriate audience.
• Strong team player, ability to work within and lead cross-functional teams.
• A high degree of personal integrity and strong work ethic; proficient in delivering sustained results in a matrixed environment.
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite and Microsoft products.

In support of the pay transparency laws enacted across the country, the expected salary range for this position is between $97,253.99 and $175,761.85. Actual pay will be adjusted based on job-related factors permitted by law, such as experience and training; geographic location; licensure and certifications; market factors; departmental budgets; and responsibility. Our Talent Acquisition Team will be happy to answer any questions you may have, and we look forward to learning more about your salary requirements. The position qualifies for the below benefits.

Adtalem offers a robust suite of benefits including:

• Health, dental, vision, life and disability insurance
• 401k Retirement Program + 6% employer match
• Participation in Adtalem’s Flexible Time Off (FTO) Policy
• 12 Paid Holidays
  
  For more information related to our benefits please visit: https://careers.adtalem.com/benefits
  You are also eligible to participate in an annual incentive program, subject to the rules governing the program, whereby an award, if any, depends on various factors, including, without limitation, individual and organizational performance.

We are proud to be an EEO employer M/F/D/V. At Adtalem, we welcome everyone and have a strong commitment towards diversity and inclusion. We encourage our Colleagues to be their true authentic selves and support laws that prohibit discrimination everywhere we do business. We also maintain a drug-free workplace.