Senior Project Manager, Products

XQ Institute is the nation’s leading organization dedicated to rethinking the high school experience so that every student graduates ready to succeed in life. We work in communities throughout the country, with individual schools and entire school systems, to help them dream big about what high school could be, turn their innovative ideas into action, and create more rigorous and equitable schools.

Reporting to XQ’s Chief Product Officer, we seek a Senior Project Manager who is highly skilled and experienced in managing multiple products from idea inception to pilot testing to GTM release, focusing on continuous iteration and enhancement in collaboration with cross-functional teams using agile methodologies. The ideal candidate is meticulously organized and detail-oriented, with proven experience working with vendors on day-to-day execution and long-term project planning in a fast-paced, collaborative work environment. The position requires at least four days a week in the XQ office in Oakland, California.

Requirements

Key Responsibilities

• Agile Project Management: Support Product Managers by facilitating sprint planning, daily stand-ups, retrospectives, and stakeholder meetings following Agile principles to enhance product development and ensure timely delivery.
• Workflow Optimization: Develop and maintain efficient, adaptable workflows using tools like Notion, Asana, Airtable, Figma, and Google Suite. Ensure all project plans are clearly documented with defined scope, goals, deliverables, timelines, and milestones.
• Collaborative Resource Mgmt: Foster innovation and streamline solution development by building collaboration across functional teams. Define and manage roles clearly for both internal staff and external contributors engaged in content production and review. Assess and optimize workflow efficiency, proactively addressing gaps and adjusting team roles to meet dynamic project demands and capacity needs.
• Process and Quality Improvement: Continually refine project management processes and practices to optimize project delivery and organizational efficiency. Proactively identify and resolve obstacles to enhance teamwork and communication.
• Communication and Reporting: Keep key stakeholders, including senior leaders, informed about product status, risks, and issues throughout the project lifecycle. Ensure they are aware of key timelines, milestones, dependencies, and necessary trade-offs.
• Budget Management: Assist in tracking and planning product budgets. Provide input into the quarterly and annual budgeting process to align resources with organizational goals.
• Meeting and Presentation Oversight: Plan and manage product-related meetings and presentations. Prepare and oversee the creation of related materials such as memos, decks, and presentations.
• Workstream Coordination: Identify gaps in workstreams, propose solutions, and adjust team roles as needed to address capacity issues and ad-hoc needs.
• Contract and Vendor Management: In partnership with Legal, Operations, and product managers, develop new Scopes of Work and manage contracts. Oversee sourcing and management of vendors to ensure quality and cost-effectiveness.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Collaborate with a range of stakeholders, including content creators, designers, developers, and vendors, to ensure timely and high-quality completion of project tasks
• Flexibility: Willingness to perform other tasks as assigned and to learn, grow, and stretch

Qualifications

• Employment: 5+ years of work experience in project management or a similar role
• Education: Bachelor’s degree required; candidates without a Bachelor’s degree will not be considered
• Workplace Requirements:
  • Report to the Oakland XQ office 4 days a week minimum
  • Ability to travel up to 20% time

Additional Skills & Characteristics

• A confident contributor and upbeat, positive collaborator with a consistent spirit of partnership and productive problem-solving
• Experience working in an agile development process
• “Self-starter” willingness to take initiative and works well both independently and collaboratively
• Ability to adapt to challenges and opportunities with a solutions-oriented, positive perspective
• Compulsion to identify and resolve inefficiencies, and a passion for building cohesive processes
• Proactive sense of urgency in creating solutions; does not wait for others to take action
• Exceptional interpersonal skills; ability to develop relationships with a wide range of individuals and proven ability to collaborate with a diverse, multi-functional team
• Meticulously organized and detailed, with a keen eye and careful attention to detail
• Proven experience with executing against goals on time and to high standards of excellence
• Masterful management and follow-through of short-term and long-term tasks simultaneously
• Strong work ethic and independence, with a high degree of motivation to collaborate, learn, and iterate
• Ability to communicate effectively, grammatically, and accurately, both verbally and in writing, with colleagues, vendors, consultants, partners, and XQ audiences
• Mission-oriented commitment to understanding and articulating the mission, programs, and activities of XQ

• Big-picture understanding of the work that needs to be done and the detail-oriented steps involved in doing it right
• Responds rapidly and thoroughly to inquiries and requests
• Desire to work in a lively, rapidly changing, high-intensity environment with a diverse team that often collaborates fluidly across projects
• Submits deliverables on time with the level of accuracy, fidelity, and excellence required for XQ standards
• Provides flexibility to adapt effectively to changing circumstances and shifting priorities
• Consistently provides thoughts for next steps to manager and has a deep understanding of mission to be able to actions next steps independently, engaging managers productively to drive work forward with manager feedback

XQ Mindsets: Ours is a world defined by uncertainty, a society in flux, a state of unprecedented upheavals. While we don’t anticipate any quick fixes, we can anchor ourselves to what we see emerging. That’s why we have established a set of collective XQ Mindsets to ground us.

• 100% accountability: This doesn't mean you have 100% ownership. It doesn't mean you are responsible for every last thing that needs to be done. It means choosing to take responsibility for our collective success and impact.
• Maker mindset: We build stuff. We won’t always get it right the first time—in fact, we rarely will. But by quickly making and testing our work, we can learn what works and what doesn’t.
• We are the ones we’ve been waiting for: Critique is not enough. It is on us to create the solutions—no matter where we sit in the organization. We are a well-resourced organization filled with brilliant people. No one else is coming to our rescue.
• Opportunity knocks: We are ready, willing, and able to take on anything that is thrown our way. Pivots are a natural part of our approach, so let’s embrace them so that we can experience them joyfully.
• Stand on the shoulders of giants: We honor those who came before us, who aren’t seated at our tables, and build on others’ and our own earlier work with respect and reverence.

Benefits

The salary range for this role is $150-175k XQ offers excellent organizational benefits.

XQ is based in Oakland, CA with offices in Washington DC. This role will be based in Oakland, CA.

Please apply online. In your cover letter, please address why your skills, interests, and experience align with the requirements for this role.

XQ is proud to be an equal-opportunity workplace. At XQ, promoting, celebrating, and supporting diversity is a core value. Individuals are considered without regard to race, gender, age, sexual orientation, sexual expression, religion, color, veteran status, disability, marital status, or ancestry.