Associate Director, Program Management

About the role

Remote, United States

At Curriculum Associates (CA), we believe a diverse team leads to innovations that help educators and students succeed. We are seeking an experienced Associate Director, Program Management to lead large, cross-functional programs that bring high-quality instructional products and services to market. In this role, you will drive alignment across Product, Engineering, Content, Design, Marketing, Customer Success, and other Go-to-Market (GTM) teams to ensure programs deliver on our strategic objectives and meet the needs of the educators and students we serve.

The impact you'll have

• Lead the successful delivery of complex, multi-year programs that advance CA's product strategy and organizational goals
• Translate vision into clear program outcomes, milestones, timelines, and success measures
• Bring clarity and structure to ambiguous situations, helping teams align on priorities and decisions
• Strengthen the connection between Product and GTM teams to ensure clear communication, organizational readiness, and cohesive deliverables throughout the product lifecycle
• Drive continuous improvement in program management methodologies, tools, and standards across the company

What you'll do

Program Leadership

• Initiate, define, and socialize program goals in alignment with organizational strategy
• Build and manage the integrated program plan, ensuring coordination, transparency, and accountability across teams
• Lead programs through the full product development lifecycle-including Discovery, Definition, Development, and Launch-ensuring clarity of scope, timelines, and deliverables at each stage.
• Facilitate phase transitions and checkpoints; ensure teams are aligned with requirements, acceptance criteria, and readiness expectations.
• Oversee multiple workstreams and ensure balance of scope, time, cost, and quality
• Identify, manage, and mitigate risks, issues, and interdependencies
• Ensure accurate and timely documentation and reporting-including timelines, decision logs, risk registers, and program updates

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Maintain open, collaborative, and solution-oriented communication with stakeholders at all levels
• Drive alignment between Product, Engineering, Content, Design, and GTM teams; proactively synthesize complex information and ensure clarity across groups
• Facilitate decision-making processes and ensure shared understanding of tradeoffs and priorities
• Build trusted relationships that foster cross-team collaboration and accountability

Go-to-Market (GTM) Partnership

• Partner closely with Product Marketing, Customer Success, Sales, Professional Learning, and Operations teams to ensure organizational readiness for product launches and major milestones
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering teams to ensure downstream teams understand feature intent, customer value, and milestone timing throughout the development cycle
• Ensure GTM partners are engaged early in the product development process and prepared for launch through clear timelines, messaging, and resource planning
• Provide downstream teams with clear visibility into timelines, feature sets, risk areas, and program decisions
• Anticipate GTM needs and ensure proactive planning for messaging, implementation pathways, training, and customer-facing collateral
• Serve as a connector across Product and GTM functions to promote consistent communication, aligned expectations, and coordinated execution

Team Leadership & Operational Excellence

• Manage and develop a team of program managers, providing coaching, guidance, and professional growth opportunities
• Define and champion program management best practices, templates, tools, and metrics across the organization
• Identify opportunities to improve processes, streamline workflows, and increase operational efficiency
• Capture and disseminate lessons learned to strengthen future programs

What we're looking for

• 7+ years of program or project management experience leading large, cross-functional programs
• Demonstrated success partnering with GTM functions such as marketing, sales, enablement, and customer-facing teams
• Experience managing products or programs through the full development lifecycle-from early discovery through launch and post-launch iteration
• Strong understanding of software development processes, content development workflows, or combined hardware/software/content ecosystems
• Excellent strategic thinking, analytical skills, and structured problem-solving abilities
• Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, including the ability to influence without authority
• Proven ability to navigate ambiguity and bring clarity and stability to complex situations
• Strong organizational skills with a bias toward action, follow-through, and accountability
• Experience using modern program management tools (e.g., Jira, Asana, Smartsheet, Confluence)
• Prior people-management experience leading project or program managers
• A collaborative, low ego working style aligned with CA's mission and values
• Experience in EdTech, Educational Publishing, SaaS, or other technology-enabled product environments strongly preferred