Senior Product Manager, Admissions Assessment (Casper)

Overview

Steward a product that higher education programs rely on, and that few product managers ever get trusted to lead. Casper was built to answer a question most admissions systems never asked: How do we see the whole person behind the application? For more than two decades, Casper has helped institutions evaluate qualities like empathy, ethics, and judgment, the human capabilities that matter long after grades and test scores fade into the background. Today, Casper operates at a global scale and plays a meaningful role in high-stakes admissions decisions. It's trusted, research-backed, and deeply embedded in how institutions make choices that shape learners' futures. This role offers the opportunity to guide Casper through its next chapter, own outcomes, navigate real trade-offs, and apply strong product judgment to a product people depend on. This is a remote, full-time role based in Canada.

The Moment You'd Be Stepping Into

Casper is not a product in search of relevance. It's widely adopted, deeply trusted, and embedded in admissions processes that carry real consequences for institutions and learners. The work ahead is focused on enabling Casper to scale sustainably, operate more efficiently, and meet rising expectations without compromising trust. At the same time, Casper continues to run live assessment cycles and support global programs, creating a real tension between progress and continuity, one that requires strong product judgment, disciplined scope decisions, and close cross-functional partnership. You'll be stepping into a role where:

• Direction is meaningful, but not fully predefined
• Trade-offs are real, not theoretical
• Decisions carry long-term impact, not just near-term wins

This is work for a senior product professional who's comfortable navigating complexity and shaping clarity when not everything is neatly resolved.

What makes this moment exciting is that Casper is focused on building what comes next on a modern, AI-first foundation, with space for thoughtful leadership and real impact.

- Reham Fawad, AVP, Growth Products

What You'll Be Accountable For

As Senior Product Manager for Casper, you'll be accountable for the product decisions that guide Casper's evolution, balancing long-term integrity with near-term delivery and progress with trust. This role is accountable for outcomes, not just outputs. In practice, that accountability shows up as:

• Owning Casper's product direction and roadmap, including how problems are framed, which opportunities are prioritized for TAM realization, and how trade-offs are made, grounded in market needs, research evidence, operational realities, and business outcomes
• Driving Casper's strategy and expansion, including protecting and growing adoption in existing markets, identifying where Casper can expand responsibly, and translating growth strategy into sequenced product bets
• Protecting the integrity of a live, high-stakes product, ensuring reliability and continuity while meaningful evolution is underway
• Partnering closely with Engineering, Research, Operations and GTM teams to align product direction with customer needs, adoption, and growth priorities
• Creating clarity and momentum across teams, especially when priorities compete, or information is incomplete, so progress doesn't stall in ambiguity

Research Is a True Partner Here

Casper is more than software. It's an assessment grounded in decades of research, validation, and real-world use. In this role, Research is a core partner in shaping the product. Product decisions here are closely tied to research considerations around validity, fairness, and trust.

As Senior Product Manager, you will:

• Work in close partnership with Research to translate evidence into practical product decisions
• Balance rigour with feasibility, and innovation with defensibility

You don't need to be a psychometrician. You do need to be curious, thoughtful, and comfortable operating in a space where evidence matters and not everything is easily testable. For the right product leader, this partnership isn't a constraint; it's one of the most intellectually rewarding parts of the role.

The product itself is simple. What makes Casper complex and powerful is the research behind it. The integrity of the score is everything, and product and research have to be tightly connected for that to work.

- Reham Fawad, AVP, Growth Products

What Makes This a Senior Role

This role is senior because of the product judgment it requires: the ability to evaluate trade-offs, assess impact, and make decisions when the right answer isn't obvious. At this level, thoughtful and grounded product leadership is expected, bringing clarity, judgment, and a focus on long-term impact. Casper is a product with history, scale, and consequence. The decisions made here can directly affect whether a learner gains admission to the program they've spent years preparing for.

As Senior Product Manager, you'll be trusted to:

• Make calls when the "right" answer isn't obvious, and the inputs are incomplete
• Balance short-term delivery with long-term integrity, while protecting existing markets and enabling responsible strategy and expansion
• Practice responsible innovation, advancing product ambition while protecting validity, fairness, and institutional trust
• Navigate trade-offs between product ambition, research rigour, technical constraints, and operational reality
• Influence across functions without relying on authority or escalation
• Hold a clear product point of view while remaining open to evidence and challenge

You'll be expected to model strong product craft, raising the bar for how problems are framed, decisions are made, and outcomes are measured. This is work for someone who has seen products through meaningful change before, and knows that progress often comes from restraint, clarity, and follow-through rather than speed alone.

What Success Looks Like (6-12 Months In)

Six to twelve months in, success looks like clarity, momentum, and trust. You've developed a strong understanding of Casper, its users, research foundations, operational realities, and constraints, and you're fluent in the trade-offs that matter most.

More concretely:

• Casper's next phase is clearly framed and underway, with work sequenced intentionally around the most meaningful growth levers and long-term sustainability
• Decisions about what to build, defer, or simplify are being made deliberately, informed by clear success metrics, early signals, and an understanding of ROI and long-term impact
• Live assessment cycles continue to run reliably, without unnecessary disruption or erosion of trust
• Product, Research, Engineering, and GTM partners are aligned on priorities, success criteria, and how progress will be evaluated

Most importantly, Casper feels intentionally in motion. Teams trust the direction, understand why it was chosen, and know what success looks like, even when not every answer is final yet.

Who This Role Is (and Isn\'t) For

You've spent years working on complex products, the kind with real users, real consequences, and imperfect constraints. You've owned meaningful product areas, made hard trade-offs, and helped teams move forward even when the path wasn't obvious.

You're likely to thrive in this role if you:

• Own outcomes and take responsibility for seeing work through with clarity and follow-through
• Feel at home in mature products, including those with legacy systems and real operational constraints
• Start from deep customer understanding, asking the right questions before jumping to solutions, and grounding decisions in real customer needs and outcomes
• Collaborate naturally across functions, and are comfortable challenging assumptions, especially in close partnership with Engineering
• Think in systems, not just features, connecting dots and reducing complexity over time
• Bring urgency to a high-stakes product, knowing how to make progress even when there are real constraints

This role is best suited to someone who takes pride in protecting what works, and driving the strategy and evolution of a trusted product through careful, responsible innovation.

This role may not be the right fit if you're primarily looking for:

• A greenfield build with few constraints
• A fast-paced growth experiment optimized for speed over stability
• An environment where priorities are fully defined, and decisions are low-risk

Because Casper carries such a large share of our revenue and trust, this isn't a role where decisions can be hand-held. I'm looking for someone who's comfortable proposing the hard trade-offs, what we build, what we don't, and why. - Reham Fawad, AVP, Growth Products

How We Support You

At Acuity, we're intentional about scaling the company without losing what makes it special, the sense of care, connection, and shared purpose that defines our culture. As we grow, we're intentional about our principles, policies, and ways of working, protecting that foundation while giving people trust, balance, and the support they need to do their best work.

• Transparent compensation. A fair and transparent salary between $150,000-$164,000 CAD, aligned to role scope, experience, and internal equity
• Learning that grows with you. A $3,000 annual learning budget to invest in your development, whether that's deepening technical skills, building confidence, or exploring new areas of interest
• Shared success. Access to employee stock options, so you share in the value you help create
• Remote-first work. Fully remote within Canada, with up to six weeks per year to work internationally
• Time to rest and reset. Self-directed vacation (most teammates take 4-6 weeks annually), monthly Acuity Days (a collective Friday off), plus a two-week company-wide closure each December
• Comprehensive care. Health benefits from day one for you and your dependents
• Future-focused support. A 2% GRSP matching program to help you plan ahead
• Support for growing families. A 16-week parental leave top-up beyond EI, available to all parents

What Happens After You Apply

We review every application carefully, looking for people who are caring, curious, driven, and resilient. Whether you apply directly, are referred, or connect through a recruiter or hiring manager, you'll receive equal consideration. We don't use AI to evaluate applications, though you may be automatically screened out if you don't meet baseline requirements (e.g. Canadian residency and valid work authorization). In some interviews, AI may help with note-taking, but all evaluations and decisions are made by real humans. Our interviews are two-way conversations. We want to understand your career, abilities, and goals, and help you assess whether this opportunity and team are the right fit for you.

Steps in the Process

Our hiring process typically takes 2-4 weeks from initial conversation to final decision.

• Application Review. A real person reviews your application for potential fit
• Intro Chat. An informal conversation with our recruiter to explore your career path, goals, and what you're looking for, while giving you a chance to learn about Acuity Insights
• Hiring Manager Conversation. A deeper dive into your product management experience and approach with the Product leader who is the hiring manager for this role
• Case Study & Team Conversations. You'll present a brief case study and meet 1:1 with future teammates to assess alignment and ways of working
• Decision. The hiring manager reviews feedback and typically makes a decision within 2-4 business days
• Offer & Reference Checks. If it's a match, we move to offer, pending a digital reference check

Life at Acuity Insights

We're a remote-first team of 140+ people who care deeply about our work and about each other. We collaborate across time zones, connect intentionally through virtual rituals and occasional in-person time, and live our values, Caring, Curious, and Driven, in how we show up every day. As we grow, we're intentional about our principles, policies, and ways of working, protecting what makes Acuity special while giving people the trust, flexibility, and support they need to do their best work. If you're looking for purposeful work, room to grow, and the chance to help shape systems that influence how people learn and are evaluated, we'd love to meet you.