Product Operations Manager

Product Operations Manager Founding role, Product team

Start Date: January 2027 or sooner

About Subject Subject is one of the fastest-growing education technology companies in the country, helping more than 1,000 schools deliver flexible, accredited learning to students nationwide. We're backed by Owl Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. Recognized for our growth and innovation:

• TIME's Top EdTech Companies (2026)
• LinkedIn Top Startups (2025)
• Forbes 30 Under 30 (Co-Founder & CEO Mike Vilardo)
• 135K+ subscribers on YouTube

Subject sits at the intersection of two of the most consequential shifts in education: AI, and the growing demand for flexible learning paths for students who don't fit the traditional classroom model. Subject isn't a commodity courseware vendor. It's an AI-powered K-12 curriculum company serving markets where the stakes for students are high and the need for better outcomes is urgent. For someone building the operating system of a product team, that means the process you design has real consequences in classrooms.

About the team Product Operations at Subject lives inside Product. You report to the Head of Product & Design and work across every pod. Your job is to make the product org run: the process, the data, the tooling, and the rhythm that lets PMs and designers spend their time on decisions instead of logistics.

Subject ships to schools, and schools run on a calendar. A feature that lands in August is a different thing from one that lands in October. Product Ops is where the internal side of every launch gets handled: is it instrumented, is Support briefed, is CS trained, are the release notes written, is the rollout plan set. If any of those is a no, it doesn't ship. You'll be the first Product Operations hire at Subject, and you'll define how the function works.

What you'll own

Process and rhythm

• How the pods plan, prioritize, spec, and ship. Planning cadence, sprint rituals, roadmap reviews, retros. You design it, run it, and change it when it stops working
• Roadmap visibility across the company. Leadership, Sales, and CS know what's coming and when, without asking a PM
• The weekly product update to the org

Launch readiness

• The internal launch checklist. Instrumentation, support briefing, CS training, rollout plan, release notes.
• Release notes. You write them for every release. The PMM turns the important ones into product updates for districts
• Launch metrics. You define adoption and activation metrics with the PM before ship, build the reporting, and run the 30 and 90 day reviews

Data and tooling

• Product instrumentation. Every feature is tracked, dashboards exist, and a PM can answer "is anyone using this" without asking an engineer
• The product stack. Linear, Notion, Pendo, feature flags, the research repository. You own it so PMs don't have to

Voice of customer

• Support tickets, Intercom conversations, feature requests, NPS. Tagged, aggregated, and surfaced to the pods on a regular rhythm
• Research operations. Recruiting teachers and admins for interviews, scheduling, consent, synthesis templates
• The feedback loop between CS, Support, and Product. You own the operating rhythm; the pods own what they do with it

What we're looking for

Must have

• 4+ years in product operations, program management, or a product role at a B2B or B2B2C software company
• You've built or run a planning and release process that a product team actually followed
• You're fluent in product analytics. You can set up tracking, build a dashboard, and tell a PM what the numbers say
• You've owned a tooling stack (Linear, Notion or Confluence, an analytics tool like Pendo, Amplitude, or Mixpanel)
• You write clearly. Release notes, launch checklists, and leadership updates people read
• You're organized enough to run six workstreams through a back-to-school launch window without dropping one

Nice to have

• You've worked in a sector with a hard seasonal calendar
• You've run research ops: participant recruiting, incentives, consent, synthesis
• You've been a PM, or worked closely enough with PMs to know what slows them down
• You've built a product ops function from zero
• AI tools are already part of how you synthesize feedback, draft docs, and build reports

How we work We care about craft and we move fast. Feedback comes early and often, from the people who build the product, the people who sell it, and the people who use it. Launched is not the goal. Adopted is.

You'll do well here if you take full ownership, trust your instincts without ignoring the data, and like problems that need both structure and judgment. AI is already in your workflow, not on your wishlist.

The commitment Students deserve our best, and this role reflects that. We need someone who:

• Lives the mission and treats student and district outcomes as real stakes
• Takes pride in building something from nothing
• Owns the work end-to-end: process, readiness, data, follow-through
• Works from our Los Angeles office, 5 days a week
• Can commit to 60 hours a week. This is a high-output, high-ownership role and the pace reflects the ambition

We're not looking for people who tolerate long hours. We're looking for people who find meaning in building something that matters this much.

Pay and benefits Base salary is $110,000 to $135,000, based on experience. It includes an annual performance bonus tied to individual goals and company results.

Benefits: premium health coverage, gym membership, daily meals, top hardware.

Apply If you want to build the operating system for a product team that ships to real classrooms, we'd like to meet you.