Senior Program Manager, Author Acquisition

About Us

Udacity is on a mission of forging futures in tech through radical talent transformation in digital technologies. We offer a unique and immersive online learning platform, powering corporate technical training in fields such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, Autonomous Systems, Cloud Computing and more. Our rapidly growing global organization is revolutionizing how the enterprise market bridges the talent shortage and skills gaps during their digital transformation journey.

Udacity is now an Accenture company and exciting things are happening!  🚀

Are you energized by discovering untapped talent and building meaningful partnerships with subject matter experts in cutting-edge fields like Agentic AI, Machine Learning, and Multi-modal AI? We're looking for a Senior Program Manager focused on Author Acquisition to lead the charge in identifying, vetting, and onboarding world-class contract authors who will create and deliver transformative tech education content for Udacity. Think of this as a hybrid role that blends hands-on, boots-on-the-ground recruiting with high-level strategy development. You'll be the face of our contractor author program, designing what the future of the program looks like alongside a passionate content team. 

Your week might include everything from engaging top-tier experts in Artificial Intelligence, to crafting a scalable author onboarding processes, to pitching Udacity's mission to future authors, and working cross-functionally to fine-tune how we attract, compensate, and retain exceptional talent. We value your experience in building workflows, your ability to move fast with intention, and your comfort juggling multiple priorities with a strategic, data-driven mindset. If you're a natural connector with a knack for turning chaos into clarity and passion in to process, this could be the perfect role for you - read on!!

What you'll do:

• Author Acquisition Strategy: Develop and refine a structured approach to sourcing, vetting, and onboarding industry experts ensuring a diverse pipeline of contract authors.
• Objectives and Key Results: Develop OKRs for the author acquisition team.
• Verticalized Content Strategy: Develop and refine a strategy to attain verticalized versions of our content aligned to the important industries and verticals that Accenture prioritizes.
• Contract Author Pipeline Development: Build and maintain a large network of subject matter experts across Udacity’s schools through outreach via LinkedIn Recruiter, vendors, author referrals, and more.
• Long-term Author Pipeline Development: Identify long-term engagement opportunities for our best authors so they are incentivized to build a lot of content with Udacity.
• On-screen Talent Pipeline Development: Build and maintain a large network of on-screen talent across various personas to provide optionality for build teams to use. 
• Prospective Author Evaluation & Selection: Establish criteria and frameworks with Content team leads for evaluating potential authors based on subject matter expertise, teaching ability, and alignment with Udacity’s educational standards.
• Onboarding & Engagement: Streamline the author onboarding process, ensuring a smooth transition into Udacity’s content creation processes, including contract negotiations, platform training, setting up tax documentation, and content development expectations.
• Collaboration with Legal: Partner with the Legal team to ensure all author contracts align with Udacity’s legal standards, including intellectual property rights, non-disclosure agreements, compensation terms, and deliverable expectations.
• Collaboration with Community: Partner with the Community team to build a thriving author community that helps increase author satisfaction and increase repeat authors
• Manage Budget: Track the author, on-camera talent, and other costs against the Content team’s budget.
• Expand Opportunities within Accenture: Develop strategies to leverage Udacity’s relationship with Accenture to tap into the network of its employees. Build streamlined processes for identifying, engaging, and integrating Accenture experts into Udacity’s author pipeline to enhance course content with industry-leading insights and expertise.
• Stakeholder Communication: Serve as the primary liaison between authors and internal teams, ensuring clear expectations and regular updates on progress, deadlines, and deliverables.
• Cross-functional Management: Work closely with marketing and community teams to create effective outreach campaigns and engagement initiatives to attract and maintain top-tier talent.
• Author Relationship Management: Develop long-term relationships with authors by fostering strong communication, providing regular feedback, and offering incentives to maintain engagement and retention.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Leverage data to track the end-to-end recruitment process metrics, author performance, and engagement rates, iterating on strategies to improve our processes and author satisfaction.
• Industry Trends & Benchmarking: Stay current with Udacity’s competitor's strategies for author acquisition to continuously refine Udacity’s approach to recruitment.
• Process Optimization: Identify gaps and implement best practices to enhance efficiency in author recruitment, selection, and retention.
• Talk Track: Update and maintain the Udacity pitch to prospective authors based on the changing strategies of Udacity.
• Dashboard & Visualizations: With the Data team, develop dashboards and visualizations aligned to the author acquisition team's key metrics, including recruitment timelines, in-progress recruitment efforts, quarter-over-quarter improvements, and more.

What we value:

• Bachelors degree or equivalent job experience
• 7+ years of experience in program management, talent acquisition, content partnerships, or a related field.
• Strong track record in sourcing and engaging high-quality external talent, preferably in a technical or educational capacity.
• Exceptional project management skills, with the ability to manage multiple workstreams and stakeholders simultaneously.
• Strong negotiation and relationship management skills to engage and retain high-profile subject matter experts.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to effectively convey complex information to diverse audiences.
• Ability to influence and collaborate with cross-functional teams.
• Data-driven mindset with experience using KPIs and analytics to inform decisions and measure success.
• Extensive experience building out complex processes across multiple platforms and stakeholders.
• Must work with a constant sense of urgency.

Compensation: Leveled at an IC4, this role is budgeted to pay a base salary up to $135k annually, and is eligible for our corporate bonus plan paying up to 15% of base salary annually.

Location: Udacity will hire a qualified candidate for this remote based position anywhere in the US with the exception of the following states:  Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Washington D.C., Wyoming.   Relocation assistance is not available.

What We Do

Forging futures in tech is our vision. Udacity is where lifelong learners come to learn the skills they need, to land the jobs they want, and to build the lives they deserve.

Don’t stop there!  Please keep reading...

You’ve probably heard the following statistic: Most male applicants only meet 60% of the qualifications, while women and other marginalized candidates only apply if they meet 100% of the qualifications. If you think you have what it takes but don’t meet every single point in the job description, please apply! 

We believe that historically, many processes disproportionately hurt the most marginalized communities in society- including people of color, working-class backgrounds, women and LGBTQ people. Centering these communities at our core is pivotal for any successful organization and a value we uphold steadfastly.  Therefore, Udacity strongly encourages applications from all communities and backgrounds. 

Udacity is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. Please read our blog post for “6 Reasons Why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace Exists”

Last, but certainly not least…

Udacity is committed to creating economic empowerment and a more diverse and equitable world. We believe that the unique contributions of all Udacians is the driver of our success. To ensure that our products and culture continue to incorporate everyone’s perspectives and experience we never discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, ancestry, disability, medical condition (including genetic information), age, veteran status or military status, or any other basis protected by federal, state or local laws.

As part of our ongoing work to build more diverse teams at Udacity, when applying, you will be asked to complete a voluntary self-identification survey. This survey is anonymous, we are unable to connect your application with your survey responses. Please complete this voluntary survey as we utilize the data for diversity measures in terms of gender and ethnic background in both our candidates and our Udacians. We consider this data seriously and appreciate your willingness to complete this step in the process, if you choose to do so.