Product Manager, Norton Ebook Reader and Norton Illumine

W. W. Norton & Company is seeking a Product Manager to lead the evolution and growth of the Norton Ebook Reader, the student- and instructor-facing platform for Norton Ebooks and Norton Illumine. Taking a user-centered approach to product development, the Product Manager collaborates with Editorial, Sales, Marketing, Support, UX, and Engineering teams to bring industry-leading and innovative ebook solutions to market while maintaining the product s stable performance. As an expert on ebook technologies and capabilities, the Product Manager plays an important role alongside Norton s Digital Product and College Department leadership, building consensus for, and executing, strategies that explore new opportunities for the growth of Norton s digital business.

The best candidates for this role will possess knowledge of digital publishing standards and must be able to demonstrate an understanding of ebook production workflows as well as the overlaps, constraints, and interplay between content and platform features. They should feel as comfortable presenting technology to customers and general audiences as they would be prototyping ideas with developers and designers. They must cultivate trust, with an ability to balance their authoritative, practical understanding of the product with approachability and openness to new ideas.

This position reports to the Director of Digital Publishing, Production, and Design.

Essential Job Responsibilities Include:

• Develop ebook product goals and outcomes that are aligned to the priorities of Norton s College Department, Digital Products, and Digital Publishing teams.
• Identify and track metrics for measuring outcomes and goal progress; generate reports and use data to guide strategic decisions.
• Consult with Norton stakeholders and customers on discovery: floating product ideas, validating the direction of future development work, and evaluating the success of releases.
• With the help of Editorial, Marketing, and Sales colleagues, conduct market research, including customer surveys, interviews, and campus visits, to refine strategies, ideas, and branding.
• Work with Business Analysts to document user stories and acceptance criteria that align to concrete business needs.
• Work with Project Managers to organize development tasks and schedules, and to scope releases with your scrum team; use accurate project status information to keep stakeholders informed.
• With Project Managers and Business Analysts, formulate MVP scopes that the UX team, developers, and QA engineers can use to design, prototype, and test ideas.
• Maintain the product backlog in alignment with upcoming research and development priorities.
• Participate in grooming and sprint planning meetings, where you will explain the desired outcomes of user stories and bug fixes.
• Be a first responder in the event of outages, major defects, and other problems that affect the customer experience, helping the incident response team communicate with stakeholders and customers while prioritizing potential solutions to the problem.
• Help Product Specialists understand current and future functionality, so they can create accurate documentation for customers and support teams.
• Create rollout plans for new releases that can be used for product team alignment, and for communication with Norton colleagues and customers.
• Regularly host team meetings where you will present the product s direction and ensure the team s understanding of the goals.
• Several times a year, give presentations about product goals to colleagues across the Digital Product team and the College Department, including twice-yearly presentations at the College Sales Conference.
• Lean on your expertise and employ a practical outlook when finding common ground among competing priorities, protecting the product from scope creep, and maintaining a focused direction that maximizes value.
• Listen closely to the feedback from stakeholders and customers, while maintaining realistic expectations and communicating gracefully when suggestions are at odds with priorities.
• Promote excitement for Norton Ebooks and Norton Illumine by keeping open feedback channels and providing regular updates to Editorial, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success teams.
• Leverage your knowledge of standards and relationships with publishing communities to ensure sustainable development without "reinventing the wheel," contributing to the broader industry s innovation and maintaining Norton s reputation as a leader.

Required Qualifications:

• 4+ years in product teams, building stakeholder relationships, formulating goals, and implementing plans to achieve key business outcomes
• 2+ years of remote teamwork and leadership experience
• Demonstrate experience with successful development projects, preferably involving new product launches.
• Experience articulating goals and priorities as user stories and acceptance criteria
• Experience synthesizing qualitative and quantitative data to inform product direction
• Experience presenting to diverse audiences of mixed technical knowledge and building consensus for high-value priorities

• Be comfortable with unknowns and ambiguity, remaining steadfast when developing consensus or presenting your opinions about the best solutions.
• Demonstrate openness and curiosity for opportunities made possible by digital publishing and related technologies.
• Must have impeccable communication skills in a position that often requires public speaking and that demands coalition-building across several different groups.
• Manage time wisely and be able to balance new feature development, defect fixes, and exploratory research.
• Clearly articulate strategies and priorities to the ebook scrum team and other product teams with whom they collaborate.
• Must be able to translate priorities, including technical ones, to a general audience, to build understanding of the product and goals across groups.
• Be genuine, personable, and able to cultivate relationships with all levels of employees, yet measured and diplomatic when handling conflicts.
• Be proactive and adaptive in a rapidly changing environment and adjust with a "can-do" attitude, especially when handling customer feedback or incident response.
• Be highly organized, disciplined, independent and self-motivated in a fast-paced environment.
• Employment eligibility to work with W.W. Norton & Company in the US is required.
• Must be able to work full business hours.

Technical Skills:

• Fluency in digital publishing technologies such as the latest versions of the EPUB 3 family of specifications and other publishing standards by the W3C
• Understands the importance of accessibility and related specifications, including the latest versions of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
• Shows good instincts for usability, user experience, and visual design
• Comfortable with agile product development methodologies, such as scrum
• Familiarity with the features of popular ebook platforms, such as VitalSource Bookshelf, RedShelf, Kindle, among others
• Proficiency with Jira, Smartsheet, or other project management systems
• Conceptual understanding of Learning Management Systems (e.g., Canvas, Blackboard, D2L) and LTI integration
• Some knowledge of HTML, CSS, JSON, and scripting languages is a plus
• Conceptual understanding of platform monitoring tools, CI/CD, git, and APIs is a plus
• Willingness to learn other technical specs and emerging technologies

Compensation and Benefits*

Currently available benefits include:

• Annual compensation for this position is $90,000-120,000. All salaries and salary ranges posted by Norton may vary depending on experience, skills, location, and like considerations.

• Generous paid time off, paid holidays, and summer Friday afternoons beginning in July
• Generous health benefits, including PPO and EPO medical insurance options, vision insurance, dental insurance, flexible spending accounts for healthcare, dependent care and commuter, gym membership reimbursement, and more. Coverage for spouses, domestic partners, and dependent children is available.
• Profit-Sharing and 401(k) benefit plan with discretionary contribution matching by employer
• Disability and life insurances
• FMLA, parental and other leave
• Employee Assistance Program (for mental health, financial planning, and other needs)
• Company-provided laptop
• Employee discounts on Norton books
• Limited matching of employee donations to select non-profit organizations

*All policies and benefits described are subject to change at any time.