Principal Product Manager, Zen Educate
Salary not provided
+ Stock options
SQL
Expert level
London
3 days a week in office (Oval, London)
Education recruitment platform
Be an early applicant
Education recruitment platform
201-500 employees
B2BMarketplaceEducationRecruitment
Be an early applicant
Salary not provided
+ Stock options
SQL
Expert level
London
3 days a week in office (Oval, London)
201-500 employees
B2BMarketplaceEducationRecruitment
Company mission
To make a positive impact and bring about meaningful change within the education recruitment sector.
Role
Who you are
- If you like figuring things out, getting teams moving and seeing your work directly improve real people’s lives, you’ll enjoy this
- The kind who’s calm in the chaos and curious in the unknown
- You’re a natural mediator who can hold multiple perspectives, keep your head when others are flapping, and help a team find alignment without fuss. You know when to lead and when to let others run with it
- You’re also a restless learner. You collect ideas and frameworks for fun. You’re at your best when something is fuzzy and needs shaping into something testable. You get itchy when there’s too much uncertainty and have a near-compulsive need to turn ambiguity into action. Once it’s clear enough, you move fast
- You’re probably happiest when you’re learning, shipping and seeing tangible change
- 10+ years building and scaling digital products or systems with measurable impact in a marketplace business, and for extra credit, in EdTech or adjacent verticals or a hybrid physical and digital environment
- Experience running discovery, experiments and delivery end-to-end across a portfolio of product lines
- Setting strategic goals and driving delivery of products or experiences which achieve them
- Comfort working with data (spreadsheets, dashboards, BI systems or SQL if needed)
- Strong collaboration with engineers, designers, operations, sales and growth teams
- Evidence of making complex problems and systems simple and usable
What the job involves
- We’re looking for a Principal Product Manager who’s outcome-obsessed, data-savvy and happy being in the messy middle where product, people and process meet
- This isn’t a people-management role, although it will require a great deal of leadership. It’s an individual contributor role for a savvy Product Operator who still loves building: defining problems, finding leverage and turning ambiguity into momentum
- At Zen, “product” doesn’t stop at the software. The software is one part of a much bigger system that connects schools, teachers, data and processes
- Sometimes the right answer is a feature. Sometimes it’s an operational tweak, a better metric or a mindset shift that changes how people work. You’ll care more about the outcome than about what shape the solution takes
- Frame real problems and find the shortest path to proving or disproving them
- Combine qualitative insight with quantitative data to guide priorities
- Work closely with design, engineering and ops to ship, learn and repeat
- Define success metrics that link to business outcomes
- Keep improving how we do product at Zen through better tools, habits and feedback loops
- You’ll be in the thick of it: shaping, testing, talking to users, untangling blockers and helping the team focus on what moves the needle
Application process
- Intro chat – a real conversation, not a quiz
- Product deep dive – how you think, what you’ve built, what you’ve learned
- Competency and behavioural based interview
- Task and meet the team!
Salary benchmarks
Our take
With UK schools under immense financial pressure, Zen Educate is providing a smarter approach to education staffing. Recruitment in schools often relies on inefficient and expensive practices. Zen Educate is focused on tackling the pain points in the industry and providing a way to ensure schools get the best teachers possible.
It provides an online platform as an alternative to recruitment agencies, which is the only online platform accredited by the UK's Department of Education, helping schools fill staffing needs quickly and cost-effectively. Schools using the platform have reportedly saved 20-30% on supply cover costs.
On top of this, the company has also raised significant funding to support acquisitions in the UK and the US, plus the expansion of its operations and offering.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Top investors
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Aug 2025
$17.7m
SERIES B
May 2024
$37m
SERIES B
Total funding: $104.7m
Company benefits
- Macbook and tech equipment provided
- Regular "lunch 'n' learns" every month on a range of topics
- Investment in your professional development
- Regular socials
- Ownership in the company
- Pension scheme
- 25 days of holidays + all UK public holidays off
- Central London dog-friendly office with perks like fresh fruit, bike parking, showers, and an on-site gym and café
- Life insurance
- Vitality health insurance and benefits
- Cycle to Work Scheme
- Electric Car Scheme
Company values
- Commit to the mission- We commit to our mission, our customers, and our teams. We work hard because we care more
- Choose greatness over comfort- Greatness and comfort rarely coexist. We seek greatness. We understand success takes grit & determination so we seek colleagues that possess it
- Act like an owner- We all take responsibility for driving the company forward and making it a success. If we see something that could be better, we fix it. We offer stock options to all employees
- Help each other be better- Every person at Zen is someone we can respect and learn from
- A culture of trust- We hire people who are great at their jobs and we let them get on with it while being there to lend a hand when needed
- Challenge the status quo- We take action when we can see opportunities for improvement. We are in it to make our customers' lives better and to fix a broken system
- Embrace learning over perfection- We make decisions quickly and we don't hesitate. We may disagree with a decision, but we support the team and the mission by committing to it. We embrace making unknowable mistakes and learning from them
Company HQ
HQ, London
Articles
Leadership
Slava Kremerman
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously a member of the Leadership Team at Nutmeg a FS startup, they also worked at Barclays and Aon.
Oren Cohen
(Co-Founder & Chief Customer Officer)Ran the UK office of Optimizely, a Silicon Valley tech company. Prior to this, they worked at G-STAT and Intel.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Zen Educate
- At Zen, we strive to build a culture of equity and inclusion, where everyone is respected, valued and appreciated for their unique traits, experiences and perspectives. We are committed to creating a safe, inclusive and equitable environment where our team can thrive, regardless of age, ethnicity, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, disability, religion or beliefs. We value our differences and believe that practices of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion help us create a fairer, more compassionate environment for all
- We welcome applicants with diverse backgrounds and different experiences and perspectives — just like the staff who teach through Zen and the children at the schools we work with. We believe in hiring the best people from the widest pool and creating an inclusive culture where people’s voices are heard and all our team can look forward to coming to work
- We are committed to building a team that reflects the diversity of our community and promoting an equitable and inclusive environment for all. We seek out diverse opinions, beliefs, and experiences because they collectively make us stronger; we’ve had former teachers, pilots, fundraisers, engineers, lawyers, marketers, social media experts and more join our team
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