Executive Director of Product Configuration, Supply Chain

A pioneer in K-12 education since 2000, Amplify is leading the way in next-generation curriculum and assessment. Our core and supplemental programs in ELA, math, and science engage all students in rigorous learning and inspire them to think deeply, creatively, and for themselves. Our formative assessment products help teachers identify the targeted instruction students need to build a strong foundation in early reading and math. All of our programs provide educators with powerful tools that help them understand and respond to the needs of every student. Today, Amplify serves more than 10 million students in all 50 states. For more information, visit amplify.com.
Amplify has undergone tremendous growth as a provider of high quality instructional materials in K-12 education. Developing and maintaining a 6K+ SKU catalog of physical products requires new innovations and frameworks to ensure that products are optimized for supply chain functions at scale. This role will work closely with product development teams to ensure that design and configuration decisions enable strong back-end service performance, which will translate to a positive customer experience.
This role will coordinate between the product development function and planning, distribution, manufacturing, and fulfillment services to achieve near and long term excellence in product optimization. Developing and leading a team of product and operational experts to achieve these outcomes is the key focus of this role.
General Responsibilities:

• Finalize the team's structure, recruit, and on-board high performing team members
• Develop optimal product configuration framework with manufacturing, distribution, and other supply chain functions. This framework will consider the complex variations in current product design, available and innovative packaging, constraints of various customer procurement models, with the goal of achieving simplicity and speed to consumers in our fundamental designs. This framework will be designed in collaboration with product management and Amplify's Deal Desk function, responsible for optimizing products/pricing for upstream Sales processes. Additionally, Sales and Customer Success will provide input to this framework to optimize for the customer experience.
• Develop and launch collaborative processes between Supply Chain Operations and Product Development that ensure design framework and corresponding design decision rights are implemented consistently and with high quality results.
• Master and maintain product records across operations technology stack (Salesforce, Netsuite, etc.) and third party partners. Ensure that product hierarchy and attributes support all necessary business reporting. Enact enterprise standards and conventions for product configuration and mastery and set new standards for product types and hierarchies based on new offerings alongside SVP/GM, Product, and Supply Chain Operations.
• Act as subject matter expert regarding product configuration and customer experience related to supply chain operations workflows and capabilities.
• Support capacity building in Customer Success, acting as a product and operations SME for large strategic accounts that may include non-standard service obligations.

Supply Chain Operations Workflows:

• Understand and inform the end-to-end process from Closed Won opportunity to delivery to ensure optimal customer experience and to find opportunities of efficiency.
• Collaborate with Product teams to create high level physical product configurations for potential new product; understand and communicate operations costs and fulfillment timeline implication of # of units, scope and sequence,page counts, etc.
• Ensure that finished product files are available in time for supply chain functions and overall fulfillment readiness.

New Product development:

• Recommend list of all physical items included in product and collaborate with Product to determine physical format of books (paper type, binding, page count)
• Determine physical configuration of product (SKUs, Assemblies, packaging type, # units in each physical package) in collaboration with Product

Market Readiness:

• Provide input to Deal Desk on physical product pricing
• Understand and communicate operations and production costs to the product and go-to-market teams for pricing exercises

Product In-market Management:

• Provide input to Customer Success on the design of the customer experience receiving and using physical materials
• Collaborate with Product to determine in-market customizations
• Understand and communicate impact of customizations to manufacturing and fulfillment timelines and cost
• Recommend manufacturing and fulfillment timeline for new products and in-market changes

Product Retirement:

• Collaborate with Product to determine product end of life based on existing inventory, existing assemblies, etc.
• Recommend product retirement process and timeline for SKU at the end of their lifecycle

Processes and standards:

• Work with operations, external vendors, and product teams to find opportunities for process and cost efficiency, such as automating manual tasks, replacing existing kit materials with items that are more cost effective, and easier and/or quicker to source.
• Create and manage adherence to product setup standards across all business systems:
• Work with the internal Implementation team and customers to help ensure an effective materials and entitlement onboarding process, as well as delivery issues, defective or replacement materials, or enrollment concerns for managed accounts between $1M-5M.

Leadership:

• Lead and mentor direct reports
• Communicate risks to and advance issues to Amplify Supply Chain and senior leadership
• Align with Amplify's diversity, equity, and inclusion goals for its employees and products
• Ensure all direct reports, as well as cross-company team members, experience inclusion, are engaged in their projects, and feel psychological safety to bring their authentic and true selves to work

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience
• 3+ years of experience managing print production and/or materials kit production
• 5+ years of experience in project management
• Experience delivering impeccable customer service to strategic customers
• Intermediate Financial knowledge (e.g. calculating margin, return on investment analysis)

Preferred Qualifications:

• Supply chain and / or continuous improvement experience
• Ability to think strategically and handle multiple competing priorities
• Enthusiastic self-starter, ready to roll up your sleeves and dive into problem solving
• Ability to think and react in a high energy and fast paced environment
• Passion for sharing findings and practical insights
• Collaborative and excited to work with many different teams across the company
• Strong communication skills (written and verbal)
• Experience in the field of education technology
• PMP certification
• A background in business operations
• Experience with project management tools (Smartsheets, Trello)

What we offer:
Salary is only one component of the Amplify Total Rewards package, which includes a lucrative 401(k) plan, incentive stock options, competitive health insurance and mental health options, basic life insurance, paid time off, parental leave, and access to best-in-class development programs. The gross salary range for this role is $170,000 - $185,000. This role is eligible to receive an annual discretionary bonus that rewards individual and company performance.
We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. To that end, we seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool.
Amplify is an Equal Opportunity Employer of Minorities, Females, Protected Veterans and Individuals with Disabilities.
This position may be funded, in whole or in part, through American Recovery & Reinvestment Act funds.
Amplify Education, Inc. is an E-Verify participant.