Product Marketing Specialist (Contractor)

Are you a product marketer who finds satisfaction in telling a true story well? Are you energized by the idea of building a product marketing function at a mission-driven organization? Do you want your work to help democratize career access for the young people who need it most? If this is checking off boxes for you, please keep reading.

About CareerVillage:

CareerVillage is a global tech nonprofit with a mission to democratize access to career information and advice for underrepresented youth. We do this through Coach, our AI-powered career coaching platform, and through our open-access Q&A platform where anyone can ask any question about any career. Our work has reached more than 7 million learners since 2011.

About the role:

CareerVillage is looking for our first dedicated Product Marketing Specialist to own the story of Coach, our AI-powered career coaching platform. Coach has reached a point where the product story needs a dedicated owner who can tell that story in a way that's intentional, sustained, and proactive.

You'll be the person who tells the Coach product story, wherever and however that story needs to be told: launch campaigns, recurring product communications, partner-facing communications, and the content surfaces that bring new users and partners to Coach in the first place. You'll report to our Director of Marketing and work in a highly cross-functional capacity, collaborating regularly with Product, Business Development, Partner Success, and Data teams.

This is a full-time contractor role (~40 hours/week) with a real possibility of conversion to a full-time employee position, dependent on organizational capacity and fit. The contractor rate is $45–$50 per hour.

What you'll do:

• Own external communications about the Coach product: launches, updates, partner communications, and content that helps prospective users and partners find us
• Help build the messaging and positioning foundation for Coach: value propositions, ICP documents, comparative positioning, messaging frameworks
• Audit existing product communications and propose how to evolve them into a reliable, proactive system
• Collaborate with Product on launch planning, with Partner Success on partner and user communications, with Data on measurement and research input, and with Business Development on collateral & asset development
• Partner with Product and Engineering on demo tools and product-adjacent assets that help the team bring Coach to life for partners and prospects 
• Define success metrics for launches and ongoing communications, track performance using our existing analytics stack (Google Analytics, Mailchimp, Hootsuite, Metabase), and use those signals to iterate on what's working

Who we're looking for:

Required:

• 3–5 years of experience specifically in product marketing
• Strong storyteller who finds the narrative in product detail
• Temperament for substance over hype. You believe marketing should never outpace what the product actually does
• Comfortable being given a problem to solve rather than a deliverable to execute. You'll be the first product marketer here, and shaping the work is part of the work
• Experience operating in small or scrappy organizations. You know how to make things happen without specialized teams around you
• Ability to both build foundational artifacts (positioning, messaging) and ship real launches
• Genuinely interested in our mission and excited about working on a product that serves learners in high school and postsecondary environments, as well as entry-level and early-career job-seekers
• Interest in learning and leveraging new tools and technologies for storytelling and asset development

Preferred:

• Edtech and/or AI experience
• Experience building or creating a new function at an organization
• Familiarity with B2B2C product motions, where the buyer (a school district, workforce board, or CBO) is different from the end user (a young person)
• Hands-on design experience (graphic and/or video): comfortable producing assets when needed
• Website management experience (CMS work, lightweight HTML/CSS, on-page optimization)

Compensation: $45–$50 per hour, with full-time employee conversion as a possibility, dependent on organizational capacity and demonstrated fit.

Location: CareerVillage has team members around the world, with an HQ in Palo Alto, CA. We are flexible on location within the United States, but must be able to work 9A-5P in Eastern (ET), Central (CT), or Pacific (PT) time zones 

Job Type: Full-time contractor (~40 hours/week)

Work authorization: Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States. CareerVillage is not sponsoring visas or work authorization at this time.

To apply: Please apply through our Greenhouse job posting. Applications require a resume, LinkedIn profile URL, cover letter, and responses to three short prompts. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. If you have any questions, please email us at hiring@careervillage.org with "Product Marketing Specialist" in the subject line.

A note on AI: While we welcome AI as a tool, nothing beats a response that is personal and authentic.

CareerVillage is an Equal Opportunity Employer

CareerVillage is an equal opportunity organization that celebrates diversity (for more information about our approach, check out our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Guidelines). Diversity includes race, gender identity, age, national origin, disability status, size, religion, sexual orientation, parental status, socioeconomic background, and many other parts of an individual’s identity. We are a fair choice employer: qualified applicants with a history of arrest or conviction are welcome to apply and will be considered for this role. Each team member’s perspective is integral to our success, and fostering an inclusive environment is everyone’s responsibility. At this time, we can only consider applicants with authorization to work in the United States on a permanent, full-time basis; unfortunately, we cannot provide visa sponsorship.