Manager, Content Developer Job Description

The Manager, Content Developer leads content development operations so teams deliver reliable, high-quality certification products on time and on budget. This role owns planning and execution across the content lifecycle—defining scope, building schedules and estimates, managing budgets and vendor spend, and proactively removing risks and cross-functional blockers—while ensuring validity, security, and compliance. Above all, the Manager is a champion for candidates and educators, ensuring our certifications provide clear, trusted proof of skills and support learning outcomes in classrooms and test centers.

The Manager of Content Development is responsible for building and fostering a team of writers, editors, technical reviewers, instructional designers, and localization specialists. Beyond people leadership, this role creates the operating system that helps the team run smoothly—establishing consistent workflows, quality bars, communication norms, and planning rhythms so work is predictable and scalable. The Content Development team is responsible for developing, testing, releasing, localizing, and maintaining certification and learning products that serve candidates, educators, and testing centers.

This leader directs multiple concurrent development activities and the implementation of company strategic initiatives related to certification products, including but not limited to: designing products, ensuring the content and measurement validity of products, and managing staff members supporting the development process. This role is accountable for strong project execution—creating clear scopes, building realistic level-of-effort estimates, aligning stakeholders on timelines and success criteria, tracking progress against plans, and proactively managing risks, dependencies, and change requests to protect delivery commitments and budgets.

Ideal candidates would reside in Utah.

Responsibilities:

1. Leading and developing Content Development team members and building an effective team operating cadence

- Hiring, onboarding, and training team members on department standards, tools, and procedures

- Mentoring and coaching team members; setting clear expectations and success criteria; and overseeing work quality, productivity, and professional development

- Developing and maintaining processes and supporting documentation for product development, content operations, localization, intake/triage, estimation, and change control

- Undertaking periodic process reviews to improve efficiency, predictability, and quality (e.g., cycle time, rework rates, and release readiness)

- Planning and implementing maintenance of products, including roadmap planning, release notes readiness, and stakeholder communications

- Establishing and facilitating team operating cadences (e.g., weekly content syncs, backlog grooming, cross-functional issue triage) to align priorities, manage work-in-progress, remove blockers, and escalate risks early

2. Engaging, onboarding, and overseeing the work of SMEs, content vendors, and other contractors

- Recruit, engage, and onboard contractors and SMEs (including external pipelines), communicating engagement terms, security requirements, and expected timelines

- Manage contractor/SME deliverables to defined scope and acceptance criteria; provide feedback; and ensure quality, timeliness, and exam-security adherence

- Setting and reinforcing meeting/workshop participation norms and exam security expectations for SMEs and contractors (e.g., confidentiality, approved file-sharing channels)

- Lead vendor management, including statements of work, budget tracking, invoicing coordination, and performance/quality reviews

3. Partnering with senior management to plan and deliver content products (scope, estimates, budgets, and schedules)

- Working with senior management to plan the annual budget, including assumptions, staffing/vendor mix, and prioritization tradeoffs

- Working with Finance and Program Management to maintain a list of core content products, define lifecycle/maintenance needs, and plan replacement strategies

- Working with technology groups and the Project Management Office to develop release plans, map dependencies, and maintain milestone-based schedules for content products

- Tracking team and project budgets (forecast vs. actual), managing variances, and representing resource needs to the organization for the next fiscal year

- Developing tactical and strategic resourcing plans, including capacity planning across internal staff and external partners

- Reporting on and monitoring monthly and quarterly progress with clear, timely status updates (scope, schedule, budget, risks/issues, and decisions needed)

- Developing strategic solutions, level-of-effort estimates, and costing scenarios to support prioritization and investment decisions

- Providing support for responses to requests for proposals

4. Supporting compliance, internal controls, and audit-related documentation for content development investments

- Maintaining project documentation and audit trails (e.g., business cases/proformas, approvals) in designated systems and coordinating updates with Finance and project stakeholders

5. Coordinating activities with clients, vendors, and cross-functional internal teams to deliver a strong candidate and educator experience

- Working directly with clients and partners to design, review, and continuously improve certification products and supporting resources

- Exercising independent judgment in methods and techniques; aligning stakeholders on decision criteria; and managing change requests to protect validity, security, timelines, and budgets

- Working with Certiport's psychometric function to run Job Task Analysis (JTA) workshops, content development workshops, technical reviews, standard setting sessions, and surveys

- Developing and maintaining policies and operating agreements for exchange of information and resources between Content Development, Technology, QA, and Support (including handoffs, service levels, and escalation paths)

- Maintaining up-to-date knowledge of testing processes and the end-to-end candidate and educator journey (registration, delivery, accommodations, scoring, reporting, and support)

- Serving as a champion for candidates and educators by bringing their needs into product decisions, prioritizing clarity and fairness in content, and partnering with stakeholders to improve the usability and instructional value of certification materials

- Coordinating with technology and support teams to triage and resolve content tooling and delivery issues that impact development schedules

6. Other duties as required

- Traveling on behalf of the company as needed

- Representing company at industry conferences, including research & presentations on key initiatives;

- Performing other duties as required

Candidate & Educator Advocacy (Why our certifications matter)

Our certifications help candidates prove job-ready skills and help educators align instruction to clear, measurable outcomes. This role protects that value by delivering content that is valid, secure, accessible, and practical to use in real testing and classroom environments.

Qualifications

Required Skills & Competencies

- Program/Project Management: scope definition, estimation, schedule management, dependency/risk management, and clear status reporting

- Content Development & Assessment Quality: standards alignment, item/content review practices, and partnership with psychometrics to support validity

- Change Leadership: process design, continuous improvement, and adoption of new workflows/tools across a distributed team

- Strategic Thinking: prioritization tradeoffs, roadmap planning, and alignment to product/program outcomes

- Stakeholder Management: expectation setting, cross-functional decision facilitation, and vendor/SME partnership management

- Attention to Detail & Compliance Mindset: documentation discipline, audit readiness, and consistent application of quality and security standards

Education and/or Experience:

- Bachelor’s degree in business, Liberal Arts, English, Education, Information Technology, Instructional Design, Educational Psychology or equivalent

- Master’s degree in education, Instructional Design, Psychometrics, Business Administration, or equivalent preferred

- 5+ years of experience in a role related to assessment item creation/validation and or assessment standards, such as psychometrics

- 2+ years people management experience

- Must have a high degree of technical proficiency (e.g., Microsoft 365 collaboration tools, content authoring/review workflows, spreadsheets for budget tracking, and project planning/tracking tools)

- Experience with Agile development methodology preferred

- Training experience, especially in a technical domain is highly preferred.

Other requirements:

- Proven management/leadership experience in a certification setting, including personnel leadership, mentoring, and training

- Comprehensive experience in item development, standards alignment, and test design

- Excellent project planning and organizational skills, including the ability to coordinate multiple efforts, build estimates, manage dependencies, and adapt to changes in priorities

- Outstanding oral and written communication skills required

- Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, especially in a teamwork environment, with comfort making and communicating scope/schedule/budget tradeoffs

- Strong interpersonal skills

- Solid time management - be able to prioritize workload under pressure to meet tight deadlines

- Flexibility of working patterns during peak periods

- Attention to detail even with repetitive tasks

- Willingness to take on other activities as identified through management that are required for effective execution of the objectives defined for the role, team, department, division, and corporation.

- Strong desire for continual learning

This individual must be self-directed, driven, and results-oriented with a sense of urgency.

Compensation at Pearson is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and specific location. As required by the California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York State, New York City, Vermont, Washington State, and Washington DC laws, the pay range for this position is as follows:

The minimum full-time salary range is between $100,000 - $115,000.

This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program, and information on benefits offered is here.

Applications will be accepted through Friday, June 26, 2026. This window may be extended depending on business needs.

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