Product Operations Manager at Playlab

Playlab is a tech non-profit dedicated to helping educators and students become critical consumers and creators of AI. With an open-source, community-driven approach, Playlab equips educators and students to build custom AI apps for their unique contexts. Over 100,000 educators have published apps on Playlab.

At Playlab, AI is viewed as a new design material, meant to be shaped collaboratively to bring diverse ideas about learning to life. If you're passionate about building creative, equitable futures for students and teachers, this role may be for you.

The Role

Playlab is seeking a Product Operations Manager to join their growing team. This role acts as the connective tissue across the Product organization, anticipating challenges, and building systems that empower engineers, product managers, and designers to excel.

The Product Operations Manager’s mission is to enable product teams to focus on building great products. They improve daily operations by ensuring the right systems, documentation, coordination channels, and insights are in place. This role also supports hiring across the Product organization, combining system-building, process improvement, and hands-on execution with the Product leadership team.

Responsibilities

• Product Operations Model Execution and Support:
  • Manage product intake and readiness from initial request through discovery, planning, delivery, and launch.
  • Maintain product workflows, tools, documentation, and reporting to support decision-making and workflow progression.
  • Coordinate launch readiness across Product, Design, Partnerships, and Support, including launch calendars, go/no-go reviews, communications, compliance, and post-launch tracking.
  • Manage research operations, including participant recruitment, research intake, scheduling, documentation, and a searchable repository of findings.
• Product Hiring and Candidate Experience:
  • Coordinate the hiring process for Product roles, from application review through interviews, debriefs, and offers.
  • Keep candidates informed and ensure interviews are scheduled, prepared, and run consistently.
  • Prepare interviewers with context, materials, and evaluation criteria.
  • Organize debriefs and capture feedback to inform hiring decisions.
  • Track candidates through the process, identify delays, and keep the pipeline moving.
• Data & Insights:
  • Build and maintain dashboards to help PMs and leadership make evidence-based decisions.
  • Drive consistent reporting for key product health metrics, such as adoption, retention, and engagement, for Playlab overall and for product teams.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience building organizations, programs, or functions from scratch.
• Track record of operating across organizational boundaries and building trust quickly in new contexts.
• Ability to translate between technical/product teams and field-facing/user-facing teams.
• Comfort with ambiguity and willingness to own problems before they are well-defined.
• Familiarity with product development processes and the product/engineering interface.
• Familiarity with business processes and needs, including financial sustainability.
• Strong communication skills, especially in remote-first environments.