Fractional Product Manager – EdTech Deployment

Location

Remote

Contract

Remote

Engineering

Playlab is growing fast—our partnerships now span individual teachers, schools, districts, and ministries of education across multiple countries. But our product infrastructure hasn't kept pace with our partnerships success. We need someone who deeply understands how edtech products actually land in schools and districts to help us close that gap.

We're hiring a Fractional Product Manager to own a focused, high-impact scope: making Playlab work for institutions s means designing how roster data flows in and out of Playlab, defining a domain model that serves both organizations and individual users, and specifying the admin controls that institutions need to deploy with confidence.

This is a time-limited engagement. You'll work closely with Playlab's CTO, engineering team, partnerships team, and designers to define requirements. You’ll also help shepherd implementation. The exact hours and duration will be determined based on mutual fit.

If you've lived through the pain of deploying edtech at the district level and want to help a mission-driven organization get this right, this role is for you.

Domain Model Design

• Design a domain model that enables both institutions (districts, schools, ministries) and individuals (teachers, coaches) to use Playlab successfully

• Clarify how users, organizations, apps, and permissions relate to each other as Playlab scales

• Ensure the model supports Playlab's current partnerships while creating flexibility for future growth

Administrative Controls

• Specify the controls that give institutions visibility and confidence: user management, app distribution, usage reporting, and appropriate content governance

• Balance institutional needs with Playlab's commitment to educator agency—administrators need oversight without locking down what makes Playlab powerful

• Work with the partnerships team to prioritize based on what's actually blocking deployments

Rostering & Data Integration

• Define requirements for getting roster data into and out of Playlab at scale—supporting districts and organizations with varied SIS configurations

• Specify integration patterns that work across the fragmented K-12 data landscape (Clever, Class Link, One Roster, custom exports)

• Design flows that reduce manual work for IT administrators and partnership teams

• Have shipped rostering, SSO, or admin features for a product used in K-12 schools or districts

• Understand how edtech procurement, IT administration, and classroom deployment work

• Can translate institutional requirements into clear product specs without over-engineering

• Write requirements that engineers can build from—you're specific, not hand-waavy

• Are comfortable working in a fast-moving environment where you'll need to make decisions with imperfect information

• Care about education and want to help a mission-driven product scale responsibly

• Experience with SIS integrations (Clever, Class Link, One Roster) or identity management in education

• Background working with districts or state/ministry-level education deployments

• Familiarity with data privacy requirements in education (FERPA, state student privacy laws)

• Experience at early-stage edtech companies where you had to build deployment infrastructure from scratch

Focused Impact: You'll solve a specific, high-leverage problem that will unlock further growth

Mission-Aligned Work: Playlab is a nonprofit building open, community-driven AI tools for education. Your work directly supports equitable access to AI literacy.

Strong Collaborators: You'll work with a passionate team that includes experienced educators, engineers, and designers who care deeply about getting this right.

Flexible Engagement: Remote work with hours structured around mutual availability.