EF Education First

VP of Product Innovation

EF is the world leader in international education and their mission is to break down barriers in language, culture, and geography and so far we have helped over 15 million people learn a language, discover the world or earn an academic degree. EF has fifteen subsidiaries and non-profit organizations, schools and offices in over 53 countries and employs over 46,500 staff and teachers. In today’s increasingly complex and interdependent world their mission is more relevant than ever. 
EF is an equal opportunities employer. EF offers competitive salaries and a multicultural working environment. If you are motivated by the prospect of an international career with a dynamic and forward-thinking company, EF wants to hear from you.

The VP of Product Innovation is responsible for connecting our business and customer needs with our product development. This global role, based in Shanghai and reporting to the Global COO is responsible for planning, delivering and maintaining our hybrid online-offline technology, products and services. This position entails budgeting human and financial resources and ensuring high quality output. This role spans technology, content and product scoping to see the projects through on time and on budget. The right candidate will have opinions on what we should build, what innovative solutions make sense for our customers and how to deliver projects with efficiency while motivating our development teams. 

This is a critical position and its success will solidify the foundation of our business across several countries and support our development strategy in new markets. This is an incredibly exciting position for someone who loves leveraging their technology background and project management skills to drive significant business results while working with a fast-paced and notoriously fun group of people. This position promises tremendous growth opportunities within EF across multiple departments, products and geographies for someone who excels in this role. 

Core responsibilities:

  • Research and consolidate customer needs, desires and barriers to identify opportunities for product and system development; present product development proposals to business leadership.
  • Gather and consolidate requirements and needs from internal stakeholders.
  • Regularly communicate and update the stakeholders about the product and systems pipeline and priorities to garner cross functional team input and alignment.
  • Manage the rollout of subsequent versions of our digital platform.
  • Ensure timely and high quality development and maintenance of our websites and monitor lead and customer service flow.
  • Manage systems for scale, usability, and efficiency.
  • Serve as the conduit of customer and staff feedback on the digital platform, systems, hardware and other software to the technical teams.
  • Oversee the development teams supporting current and future web properties.
  • Coordinate projects and requirements across multiple countries.

Required experience and skills:

  • Ability to influence staff and stakeholders through data and insights and cross-cultural project management or stakeholder management experience preferred.
  • Exceptional organizational skills and experience working in a large and/or global matrix organization.
  • Excellent project management skills/leadership (a PMP certification is a plus) with the ability to lead a cross-cultural team.
  • Understanding of development life cycle and strong testing experience, budgeting experience a plus.

Technical experience and skills:

  • A BS or MS in Computer Engineering or Computer Sciences is preferred.
  • Experience in multiplatform products (Web, mobile, tablet).
  • Experience in managing multi-tiered architecture is a plus.
  • Experience in designing Object Oriented, SDK and API based solutions is a plus.
  • Experience in Web-services and Back-end services is a plus.
  • Experience in Agile processes (Scrum, Kanban) is a plus (Scrum Master and/or PO certification is a plus).

You are fluent in English and it is beneficial if you know some Chinese. You are able to commit to living in Shanghai for a minimum of 3 years, and ability to travel up to 20%.

Your personality:

  • Excellent communication skills – clear, simple, apolitical.
  • Ability to identify, hire, retain and motivate strong talent.
  • Ability to simplify complex situations.
  • Ability to identify and address dependencies upfront.
  • Self-motivated and results driven.
  • Fun to work for with a strong 
  • Entrepreneurial and passionate about innovation. 
  • A natural team player who can influence and drive impact.

For more information regarding the position please contact Viktor Lundeberg, +46(0) 73-309 19 78; viktor.lundeberg@headagent.se or Linda Ribbing, +46 (0)72-300 13 04; linda.ribbing@headagent.se