Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Newsela is a leading education technology company dedicated to meaningful classroom learning for every student. They are seeking a Manager, Assessment Content to lead the assessment content strategy and execution, managing a team of content designers while ensuring quality and operational excellence.
Responsibilities
- Own the assessment content strategy and roadmap in partnership with the Director, Assessment and Analytics Portfolio and the A&A Product Manager
- Drive execution of the assessment content roadmap; translate quarterly production plans into team assignments, milestones, and vendor scopes
- Ensure content gaps are identified and closed across all subject areas, including academic content areas (ELA, Math, Science, and Social Studies) and non-academic content areas (Social Skills, School Climate); prioritize across domains based on roadmap and customer needs
- Monitor state and national standard changes across all content domains; ensure Content Leads are maintaining current mappings and escalate cross-domain risks proactively
- Manage Assessment Content Designers and Content Contributors — set direction, coach for growth, run regular 1:1s and performance reviews, and develop the bench
- Scope, plan, and manage large-scale projects with Content Designers, freelance contributors, and third-party vendors to meet aggressive production targets
- Own the contributor and vendor quality framework across all content domains; conduct calibration sessions and performance reviews directly where no Content Lead is in place
- Drive operational excellence by creating clear, repeatable processes and championing the tooling needs of the team
- Unify content processes and ensure consistency with other Newsela assessment designers and teams (e.g., editorial style, metadata tagging, accessibility standards)
- Collaborate with Product and Engineering to train AI models for content generation and to evaluate AI-assisted authoring tools and outputs
- Partner with Product, Engineering, Marketing and Customer-facing teams as needed on content tooling, customer questions, and go-to-market readiness
- Other duties as assigned
Skills
- 8+ years of experience in assessment content development at commercial scale (EdTech company, testing vendor, or educational publisher), with at least 2+ years in a people-management role
- Demonstrated success leading teams that include senior individual contributors — coaching, calibrating, and developing item writers and content leads
- Multi-subject standards fluency: command of CCSS, NGSS, and state-specific frameworks across multiple K–12 content areas, with the ability to set quality and alignment expectations even outside your strongest subject
- Expert understanding of educational assessment design across formative, common, and summative contexts, including measurement principles and Depth of Knowledge (DOK)
- Track record managing freelance contributors and third-party vendors at scale, including building and running a quality framework with calibration and performance review
- Strong project and production management skills — scoping work, building milestones, surfacing risk, and delivering against aggressive timelines
- Demonstrated experience designing repeatable processes and championing tooling that helps a content team scale
- Strong cross-functional partnership skills — comfortable collaborating with Product, Engineering, and customer-facing teams
- Excellent written and verbal communication; able to translate between content, product, and engineering audiences
- Experience collaborating with Product and Engineering on AI/ML-assisted content generation — including evaluating model outputs, defining guardrails, and informing training data needs
- Familiarity with content authoring tools or interoperability standards such as QTI
- Classroom teaching experience in one or more K–12 content areas
- Exposure to item performance and psychometric data, and the ability to translate that data into content revision priorities
- Experience leading content operations through significant scale or workflow change (e.g., new platform, new authoring model, new vendor strategy)
- Experience working with Pendo, Atlassian tools (Jira, Confluence), Tableau, and Heap
Benefits
- Comprehensive medical benefits with employer contribution to premiums and to HSA accounts.
- Additional benefits such as gym reimbursement, pet insurance, free access to the Calm app, Rocket Lawyer and more to help you stay healthy: mind, body, and soul.
- We are a fully remote company.
- We provide a monthly tech stipend to support your WFH needs!
- Inclusive benefits to support you and your family, including parental leave, fertility support, adoption, and more!
- 401(k) plan, which includes a employer match to help you build long-term financial security.
- Flexible PTO, paid sick time off, company holidays plus winter break (Dec 24th - Jan 1st).
- Newsela offers an annual learning and development allowance to employees to attend external training sessions, classes, workshops, conferences, and educational materials to foster professional growth within their current role and career aspirations at Newsela.
Company Overview