Product Manager

The Organization:  Merit America

The American economy is broken. Today, 53 million working adults–nearly half of the U.S. workforce–do not earn a living wage. These talented workers have few options to advance: college is too long and expensive, full-time boot camp programs don’t offer enough flexibility, and online courses don’t have the structure or support to translate learning into a new career. The result? Talented workers, disproportionately people of color and women, get stuck in low-wage roles with no way to build a better life for themselves and their families.

Merit America is a national nonprofit that creates pathways to family-sustaining careers for Americans stuck in low-wage work. Our fast, flexible solutions are built for working adults: We start by analyzing tens of millions of job postings to identify in-demand, high-paying tech careers and then work with industry-recognized partners to train for these roles with part-time programs that combine flexible online learning with best-in-class coaching. Finally, we support our learners in their job search, helping them connect with a broad constellation of local and national employers such as JPMorgan Chase and Infosys to land higher-earning, family-sustaining jobs, driving an average wage gain of $24k three months or more after completing the program. Merit America is on a mission to build a scalable pathway for workers to join the middle class through merit, not money. Since our founding in 2018, we’ve generated a projected $1 billion in near-term wage gains for our learners. 

About the Role

As a Product Manager on our small but mighty team, you will be a key contributor and leader driving our product strategy and execution. You will gain a deep understanding of our learners, our coaches, their user journeys, jobs-to-be-done and pain points. You will make product investment recommendations and define OKRs in collaboration with the rest of the Product Management team. You will work with your engineering and design team members to define solutions, validate them, build them and measure their impact. 

Through this work, you will help create the future Merit America experience for learners – economically and educationally disadvantaged folks – and coaches – Merit America employees interacting directly with learners to ensure their success in our training and job placement programs. You will report to our Senior Product Manager, Kristin Li.

What you’ll be doing

The responsibilities of the Product Manager will include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Strategy and Structured Thinking
• Excavate and validate problems to solve, needs, and pain points to drive impact for learner outcomes
• Collect and synthesize user feedback and ideas
• Define objectives and key results / metrics for the product initiatives you are driving to measure their success / impact
• Execution
• Provide user-focused rationale for product definition that guides product design decisions
• Partner closely and collaboratively with engineers and designers to build solutions that achieve the intended impact
• Understand issues that block team execution and keep up development team momentum by stepping up to help with resolution and proactively escalating where needed
• Gather and interpret qualitative feedback and quantitative metrics to measure the success of your projects
• Build expertise in the product areas you own, stepping up to clarify and troubleshoot product issues that arise
• Communication
• Clearly communicate the strategy and importance to the company of the initiatives you are driving to achieve team alignment
• Proactively consult with internal and external stakeholders to clarify questions and points of confusion with a given set of product initiatives
• Set and communicate clear expectations for your product initiatives, both internally on the development team and with cross-functional stakeholders 

Skills and Competencies

We recognize that individuals from marginalized backgrounds, including women, people of color, and those with disabilities, are often less likely to apply when they don’t meet 100% of the job qualifications. Don’t let that be the reason you miss out on this opportunity! We want to emphasize that your unique skills, experiences, and perspectives are valuable, and we encourage you to apply if you can demonstrate many of the skills and competencies. Below are the skills that are relevant for thriving in this role:

Must haves:

• Mission driven work. Committed to Merit America’s mission to pave pathways to family-sustaining careers, break the poverty cycle, and create upward mobility for low-wage workers
• Effective communicator and listener. You have excellent communication and listening skills when working closely with stakeholders and cross-functional team members, with successful experience building relationships, presenting a story, and incorporating received feedback
• Organization and project management. You pay close attention to details, and you infallibly follow through in a timely manner. You have experience managing projects and driving them forward, and then learning from project outcomes to continuously improve
• Independent self-starter. You are self-motivated and have a sense of deep personal responsibility for our collective, team success. You drive projects forward with minimal guidance, proactively seek help when deterred, and lean into hands-on testing of product functionality
• Flexible in ambiguity. You are undeterred by the distinct challenges of a remote work environment + the ambiguity and constant change that comes with building a product in a growing startup, and are excited to join and support a diverse, talented, and dispersed team
• Demonstrated history of embodying our values, which inform our work and drive our organization's culture
• Shared sense of responsibility and ownership for our collective work in making a positive impact on the community we support, true to our value of Win & Lose Together
• Committed to continuous learning and growth in understanding and addressing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion
• Passionate about fostering a workplace culture that embraces and values individual differences, aligned with our core value of inclusivity

Nice to haves:

• Technical and design collaboration. You have experience successfully working closely with designers and engineers, and incorporating their technical and design feedback into your solutions.
• Product experience. Strong understanding of design thinking and agile development best practices. Experience working directly on product experiences and setting product strategy based on user research.

Other Logistics 

• This position is full-time: 4-day work week (Fridays are an operating day if there is a holiday closure during the week)
• Location: Remote
• Salary:  $131,500
• Application Deadline: Monday, March 24th at 11:59pm PST 

Our goal is to have competitive and equitable compensation.  We have a market-based compensation approach, which means we benchmark each role from reputable data sources. We compare our benchmarks against similarly sized non-profit organizations with comparable annual budgets and geographical areas. We pay the same rate for the same roles and adjust to comply with statutory mandates.

We take care of our employees by providing the following perks and benefits: 

• 4-day work week (Fridays are an operating day if there is a holiday closure during the week)
• Medical, Dental and Vision insurance (100% Paid Employee Only Coverage)
• Flexible Spending Account and Health Savings Account
• Dependent care Flexible Spending Account
• Health Reimbursement Account fully funded by Merit
• Education & personal development reimbursement
• Catalog of courses for professional learning and development
• Short and long-term disability
• Unlimited vacation (after a 90-day introductory period)
• Paid Parental Leave and Adoption benefits (after 1 year of employment)
• 11 federally recognized holidays
• 1 week office closure in July (week of July 4th)
• 2 week holiday office closure in December/January
• 401(k) retirement plan with automatic Merit contribution
• Wellness Benefits/Wellness Resources
• Discount perks at work program
• Phone/technology stipend
• Home office setup stipend
• Affinity groups and community building via virtual, in-person, and/or regional meetups

*Eligibility for some benefits may vary based on employment status, full-time or part-time. Eligibility will be outlined during the hiring process.

Remote Work & Sponsorship

Candidates must reside within the 50 states or District of Columbia and have full authorization to work in the 50 U.S. states & the District of Columbia (international work abroad, including the U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, and other islands are excluded). In addition, Merit America doesn't offer employment visa sponsorship.

Equal Opportunity Statement

Building an inclusive, high-performing team that is diverse across lines of personal identity is integral to our success and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer.

This means we do not discriminate against any job applicant or employee because of their race, ethnicity, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This applies to all terms and conditions of employment.

We actively strive and evolve to develop and maintain workspaces that are fully inclusive. We encourage candidates from underrepresented groups to apply.

Still excited about our work?  You can learn more about our work in this video we made with our founding partner, Google.

Fair Chance Ordinance

Applicants who have arrest or conviction records and are in unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County will be considered in accordance with the state’s fair chance ordinance law. Employment under the ordinance includes part-time work, seasonal work, contract work, contingent work, work on commission, and work through the services of a temporary or employment agency.

E-Verify Statement

This employer participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. If E-Verify cannot confirm that you are authorized to work, this employer is required to give you written instructions and an opportunity to contact Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Social Security Administration (SSA) so you can begin to resolve the issue before the employer can take any action against you, including terminating your employment. Employers can only use E-Verify once you have accepted a job offer and completed the I-9 Form.