Advanced Specialist, Product Management

Advanced Specialist Product Manager – Test Security Platforms

Summary

Pearson Professional Assessments delivers the exam and testing ecosystem that professional bodies, regulators, certification programmes and schools depend on to make high-stakes decisions about people. Security is not a feature of that service. It is the service.

The role is accountable for five security domains: Identity, Behavior, Location, Platform and Environment -  and for the platforms and shared services that deliver them, across market-facing and internal applications alike. It includes the security capability roadmap for the online-proctored channel.

The role exists because our security capability today is strong but application-shaped. Controls have grown up inside individual products, driven largely by what individual clients asked for, and the same problem has been solved more than once in more than one place. We are moving to a model where security is a deliberately designed shared platform, built from a standing read of the threat landscape and the market rather than from inbound requirements. 

Key responsibilities

Domain and platform product ownership

• Own a persistent, outcome-based roadmap for each of the five domains — refreshed continuously against evidence, not reset annually by the project cycle.

• Design security as a shared platform. Define the capabilities, service contracts and integration patterns that channel and application teams consume, so a control is built once and applied everywhere it is needed.

• Maintain a live capability gap analysis by domain. Be able to answer, at any time, which assurance is weakest and what it would take to close it.

Market intelligence and outside-in discovery

• Build and maintain a standing view of the exam security threat landscape — AI-assisted cheating, proxy testing, content harvesting, organised fraud, emerging spoofing techniques — and use it as the primary input to the roadmap.

• Track competitor and adjacent-industry capability deliberately and continuously. Know where we lead, match or lag, by domain, and say so plainly.

• Run continuous discovery with candidates, proctors, test centre staff, client programme owners, and our own forensics and operations teams. Discovery is a habit, not a phase at the start of a project.

• Convert single-client requests into capabilities that serve the whole book of business. Decline bespoke security work with a reasoned, evidenced alternative rather than a refusal.

Evidence, measurement and model performance

• Instrument every control. Own the metrics that show whether a capability is actually working: detection rate, precision and recall, false-positive burden, appeal and overturn rates, candidate and proctor impact.

• Partner with data science and analytics on AI and ML-based detection. Set the performance bar, own the precision/recall position, and understand what both error directions cost a real candidate.

• Ensure the evidence a control produces is defensible — capable of standing up to candidate appeal, client scrutiny, regulator questions and legal challenge. A detection we cannot evidence is not a detection.

• Close the loop: forensics findings, incident reviews and result holds from live delivery feed straight back into the roadmap.

Delivery partnership

• Work as one team with Engineering Delivery, Architecture and Security Operations — from discovery through production and into operational life.

• Write clearly. Crisp problem statements, decision records and product narratives that a senior engineer, a client and an executive can each read and act on.

• Sequence around outcomes and dependencies, and be accountable for what reaches production — not for the plan.

Advancing how we work

• Replace project-shaped intake with durable product ownership in your area, and show the rest of the portfolio what good looks like.

• Coach and partner with programme and project management colleagues through the transition rather than working around them.

• Contribute to the shared product operating model: discovery practice, roadmap format, decision rights, KPI definitions.

Qualifications and experience

Essential

• 7+ years in product management, including 3+ years owning security, identity, fraud, risk or trust-and-safety products.

• Demonstrated ownership of a platform or shared-services product consumed by multiple internal teams or channels — not only end-user features.

• Experience with detection or classification products built on AI/ML, and genuine fluency in the precision/recall trade-off and its human consequences.

• Track record in a regulated, high-stakes environment where being wrong has real consequences for an individual: assessment, identity, financial crime, healthcare or similar.

• Evidence of driving a roadmap from market and threat intelligence rather than from inbound customer requirements.

• Strong written communication. You can make a complex security trade-off legible to an executive and to an engineer in the same document.

Desired

• Experience inside an organisation transitioning from project or programme delivery to product management.

• Background in assessment, certification, proctoring, biometrics or online examination integrity.

• Familiarity with secure client software, browser lockdown or endpoint integrity.

• Exposure to accessibility and accommodations, and to the real tension between security controls and equitable access.

Applications will be accepted through October 1. This window may be extended depending on business needs.

Compensation at Pearson is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and specific location. As required by the California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York State, New York City, Vermont, Washington State, and Washington DC laws, the pay range for this position is as follows:

The full-time salary range for this role is between $120,000 - $150,000

This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program, and information on benefits offered is here