Senior Product Manager - Assessments (12-month Contract)

Join Acuity Insights as a Senior Product Manager and play a pivotal role in accelerating the startup-to-scaleup journey of a company with high global growth potential in the higher education sector - and beyond. 

You’ll help shape the future of market-leading assessment products that identify and showcase people’s potential and impact the academic paths of thousands of future professionals. 

The role is well-suited for a senior-level product management practitioner with a strong delivery orientation who can help accelerate market releases. A solid understanding of design and engineering practices is also essential to align product vision with technical feasibility. Additionally, successful candidates bring a problem-solving mindset grounded in deep care and empathy for users to create solutions that address their real needs and pain points.

What We’re Building

Imagine a world powered by everyone’s FULL potential. 

At Acuity Insights, it’s the future we are building. 

We founded our company to meet the need for a higher education admissions method that goes beyond academic performance and considers traditionally unseen or undervalued skills and qualities in applicants that are predictive of educational and professional success. 

Today, our solutions help discover, nurture and realize potential, supporting holistic success from admissions to graduation for students, education programs, and higher education institutions across North America, the U.K., Australia and Saudi Arabia.

Our core assessment product, Casper, provides education programs with a more holistic view of applicants' potential by measuring their soft skills. Incorporating Casper's insights into the admissions process results in a larger and more diverse applicant pool, greater student success, and better professionals. Since 2014, over 600 higher education programs have adopted Casper, and more than 1 million applicants have registered for the test.

Through our core education management solution, One45, we help medical schools and health professions programs streamline the complex processes of curriculum management and student assessments, providing the data-driven insights needed to graduate competent healthcare professionals.

With our fast-growing data and insights solution, Analytics, we leverage critical integrations with our data warehouse and powerful dashboards to provide medical schools with deep insights and intelligence on student and program performance, powering real-time decision-making and continuous quality improvement.

Opportunity & Impact

As Senior Product Manager, you’ll work remotely from Canada, be a valued member of our Product organization, report to the Director of Product - Assessments, partner with Product Management and Product Marketing Manager peers on the Assessment team, and collaborate with team members from Design, Engineering, Research, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success.

You'll spearhead the launch of our innovative new suite of talent assessment tools. These include solutions designed to evaluate candidates' soft skills and communication styles (both verbal and nonverbal) and track their development throughout students’ educational journeys. You'll be instrumental in bringing these groundbreaking tools to market, shaping the future of talent evaluation and development.

Additionally, the products you lead will drive revenue growth and support our long-term goal of becoming the global leader in identifying, developing, and showcasing people’s potential in higher education and workplaces.

As part of our Product team, you will contribute to building a world-class product management function. Leveraging the product management expertise you’ve built, you get to introduce, lead, and implement change, like improvements to how we develop roadmaps and conduct daily scrum ceremonies. You'll help figure out how we can move faster from problem statement to prototype and consistently hit quarterly release targets. Plus, you'll support our ongoing adoption of PDLC to accelerate product time to market so product innovations can be a more significant contributor to revenue growth.

As a Senior Product Manager, your key areas of day-to-day contribution are: 

Collaboration & Communication

• Drive cross-functional alignment: Lead collaborative efforts with design, engineering, marketing, and sales teams to ensure a shared understanding of product goals, strategies, and priorities.
• Champion the user: Actively engage with users and key stakeholders to gather feedback, understand their needs, and effectively communicate product updates and progress.
• Facilitate agile ceremonies: Expertly guide stand-ups, sprint planning, and backlog grooming sessions to foster a collaborative and efficient development process.
• Translate vision into action: Distill complex product features into clear, concise user stories and acceptance criteria for the development team.

Strategy & Planning

• Shape product vision: Define and refine the product vision and roadmap by staying abreast of market trends, analyzing user needs, and incorporating data-driven insights.
• Prioritize strategically: Prioritize features and define product requirements based on a deep understanding of user value and business objectives.
• Analyze and iterate: Continuously analyze product data and metrics to assess performance, identify areas for improvement, and inform product strategy.

Execution & Delivery

• Own the product lifecycle: Oversee the entire product lifecycle, from ideation and discovery to development, launch, and post-launch optimization.
• Guide the development process: Manage the product backlog, conduct user testing, and gather feedback to ensure the product meets user needs and expectations.
• Launch with impact: Coordinate product launches and marketing campaigns to drive user adoption and achieve business goals.
• Measure and optimize: Track and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure product success and ensure alignment with business objectives.

To thrive in this role, you:

• Operate as a senior-level product manager and have built expertise in core product management practices like discovery and problem identification, roadmapping, scope management, and agile delivery.
• Have worked within a strong product management function in a technology company, consultancy or boutique agency and have developed a point of view on what effective product management looks like. 
• Developed SaaS B2B or B2C product roadmaps and delivered products with over 10,000 monthly active users.
• Are naturally inclined to focus on delivery and speed and have taken a product from idea to market in 6 months or less or brought a feature, MVP, or product line to production in under 3 months. 
• Excel at effectively communicating with partners, influencers and decision-makers and adapting to your audience. You have pitched product ideas to business leaders, stood up to and persuaded people with strong opinions, can express your ideas and feelings through different forms and listen to diverse input to influence product decisions. 
• Have a strong understanding of design practices and recognize that a good UX/UI resonates with the majority of users. You’ve collaborated closely with product designers and have led design sprints.
• Bring deep knowledge of engineering practices, including CI/CD and modified scrum focusing on high-quality and timely delivery of usable products.
• Demonstrate deep care and empathy for the end users your product serves and fully commit to its success by doing whatever is within your control to ensure its growth and impact. 

To thrive in our work environment, you are:

• Caring toward people, whether they are team members or external partners. You take time to listen, understand and empathize. You don’t hesitate to provide constructive feedback and enjoy sharing your knowledge and perspective to help others learn and grow.
• Curious by nature and open to possibilities and different viewpoints. You like exploring, experimenting, asking questions, listening, and learning from other people’s points of view. 
• Driven to help realize our vision and mission, problem-solve independently and with your team members and collaborators, continuously seeking to grow your knowledge and improve your skills and practices. 
• Resilient, you keep going, bounce back from challenges, and welcome and embrace the change necessary to scale a company.
• Someone with strong integrity. You consistently uphold ethical standards, act transparently, take accountability, and build trust by aligning your actions with your values, even in challenging situations.
• Self-aware, knowing your strengths, gaps, emotions and values, fueling continuous personal and professional growth.
• Motivated by purposeful work that has a meaningful impact and aligns with your values and interests. 

Selection Process

We review every application. We consider all your professional experiences and how you have applied your skills and knowledge to add value and make an impact. We also look for evidence that you share our core values (caring, curious, and driven) and are interested in helping bring people's potential to life.

To ensure a fair process, you will receive equal consideration whether you apply, get introduced as a referral, or directly contact the manager or recruiter for this role.

Applicants who do not live in Canada or have a work permit are automatically be screened out.

Interview Process

We have designed our interview process to be a two-way discovery and create space for meaningful conversations.

We want to get to know you personally and professionally, understand your career journey and experiences, relevant skills, professional interests and priorities, and assess for alignment with our business needs and what we can offer you.

We also want you to have the information you need to make an informed decision about this opportunity. That’s why we encourage you to stay curious and ask questions every step of the way. 

Here are the steps you can expect:

• Application Review & Response. A human reviews your application for potential and fit and provides a response on any potential next steps via e-mail.
• Conversation with Recruiter. Join a 60-minute phone call to share your professional journey and interests while gaining in-depth insights into the company, culture, and team.
• Conversation with Manager. Spend 45 minutes on a video call with your potential future manager (Director of Product - Assessments) to discuss your relevant work experiences and learn in-depth about our Product vision, the Production function, team and role. 
• Conversations with Team Members. Meet 1-on-1 on video with 3-4 future peers, partners and collaborators from Product, Marketing, and Engineering to get a deeper sense of life at Acuity Insights and explore how you’ll work together. Afterward, you’ll also have another 1-on-1 session with the Manager, where you’ll work together on a live problem-solving exercise.
• Wait For a Decision. The Hiring Manager consolidates team feedback and makes a hiring decision within 1-4 days.
• Offer Conversation & Reference Check. If we find a mutual match, we’ll invite you to a conversation to share our offer details and, in parallel, complete a reference check.

Compensation 

Several factors will inform our offer: your unique qualifications, experience, expected contributions and salary needs, market data, budget, and internal pay equity.

The target annual compensation for this role is $120,000 to $140,000 CAD. While this range does not represent the full Senior Individual Contributor salary band at Acuity Insights, it reflects the budget allocated for this specific hire.

This position is not eligible for other types of compensation, such as matching retirement saving contributions, variable or signing bonuses, or stock options.

Benefits 

• Investment in your growth. Access a $3,000 yearly learning budget so you can develop yourself professionally and personally.
• Flexible and remote work. Enjoy the freedom to work from anywhere within Canada, work from abroad for up to 6 weeks per year, and configure your professional schedule to integrate with your personal life. 
• Prioritized rest and time off. Enjoy two weeks of disconnected vacation at year-end, self-directed vacation (people typically take 4-6 weeks per year), extra Fridays off throughout the year, and support for medical, family, or mental health needs without financial worry.
• Hardware and workspace equipment. Get set up with a Mac laptop, an extra monitor, and other equipment necessary for your home office.

Working at Acuity Insights

Behind Acuity Insights, you'll find a team of 130+ caring, curious, and driven individuals dedicated to our company’s success. We collaborate remotely and occasionally co-work in person across Canada and some international locations.

We are committed to fostering a work environment where everyone feels respected, valued, and well-supported. We’ve designed our processes and policies to create a sense of community and belonging, promote equity, embrace diversity, champion inclusion and encourage work-life balance so that every individual can bring their full potential.

We recognize that every person on our team is unique and has different qualities, lived experiences, strengths and life situations. Our team's diversity is our strength. We know it contributes to a healthier work environment, enables us to build and operate a more sustainable organization, and makes us capable of delivering better business outcomes.

We encourage individuals from non-traditional backgrounds or historically marginalized and underrepresented groups to apply to this role.

Thanks for considering Acuity Insights as your next employer!