Division and Unit Overview

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is the world's largest scientific membership association and one of the top ten peer-reviewed science publishers in the world. The Publications Division of ACS has all of the characteristics of a medium-sized commercial STM publishing company: its primary competitors for authors, market-share, and talent are Elsevier, Wiley, and Springer/Nature. It is one of two ACS divisions charged with serving a dual function: generating substantial revenue - currently over $200M - to support the Society's programmatic activities and fulfilling a core mission of the Society by advancing knowledge in the field of chemistry and the chemical enterprise.

ACS Publications is passionate about supporting the mission of ACS through products and services that meet the most critical needs of researchers, authors, and reviewers. We are ambitious for our customers and believe transformative technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) will drive the transformation of our industry, accelerating the dissemination of the scientific discovery needed to address Earth's greatest challenges. As a member of the ACS Publications Product team, the Senior Product Manager will play a critical role in bringing about this transformation for book and journal products.

Position Summary

The Senior Product Manager will drive development of our next generation production platform, delivering best-in-class user experience while also achieving operational efficiencies. Reporting to the Director, Publishing Platforms, the Senior Product Manager will work in lockstep with product managers across the publishing value chain to deliver on enterprise product, technology, and commercial objectives. This role requires extensive collaboration with teams across the organization, including Editorial, Technology, Product, Marketing, and Sales, as well as rigorous engagement with our primary customers - authors & researchers - to ensure our products and platforms address their most critical needs.

The ideal candidate will have a strong background in product/platform development and management and will possess a deep commitment to user experience and operational excellence.

Position Accountabilities

• Leads development of production-focused technology with cross-functional teams, ensuring team alignment with customer needs, overall business strategy, and governance (i.e. Enterprise Architecture).
• Partners with Product Owners/Business Analysts to guide technical decisions during new product development.
• Leads development and evaluation of prototypes.
• Develops deep understanding of customer needs, partners with colleagues across the division to design and
• Owns product roadmap and feature backlog, communicates priorization and delivery decisions to stakeholders, reports on progress/deliverables to senior leadership.
• Works with UX & Design specialists to build beautiful and functional user experiences.
• Manages the production platform lifecycle from product development through scaling to product maturity.
• Establishes KPIs, leading and lagging indicators; collects, analyzes, and reports on product performance and user experience.
• Maximizes value of the platform and associated features by identifying business outcomes beyond current application.
• Monitors trends in technology & scholarly publishing to recommend product and platform improvements.
• Maintains a familiarity with the current state of ACS' business architecture including capabilities, organizational structure, and high-level supporting technology.

Education/Experience and Knowledge Requirements

• Advanced degree or equivalent combination of education, certification, and experience in product development, publishing, operations, or IT.
• 8 years of relevant technical product development experience.
• Extensive experience working on large, innovative, transformational projects and a proven ability to bring cross-functional teams together around a shared vision.
• Demonstrated experience collaborating with business stakeholders, internal resources, and third-party vendors.
• Strong communication skills, both oral and written, and an ability to document and communicate across business and technical audiences.

• Strong understanding of scholarly publishing workflows.
• Strong customer service and user experience orientation.
• Collaborative working style, effective at working with globally dispersed teams to advance projects.
• Willingness and ability to travel up to 15% of the time.

This position will be primarily based in the Washington, D.C. office or Columbus, OH office.Publications Division employees work a hybrid schedule, consisting of working onsite two days per work, as decided by functional area. The balance of the week is open to working remotely, though employees are always welcome onsite each day if they choose.

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