Product Specialist, Instructure
Platform
Dynamic learning management platform
Be an early applicant
Dynamic learning management platform
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
1001+ employees
Company mission
To help learners thrive in tomorrow's landscape by delivering a future-ready ecosystem.
Role
Who you are
- Proven experience in a product-focused, customer-facing role such as Product Specialist, Product Marketing, Product Management, Solutions Consulting/Engineering, Customer Success, or similar
- Demonstrated ability to develop deep expertise in software products and clearly explain functionality, value, and tradeoffs to diverse audiences
- Strong understanding of customer needs, market context, and segment dynamics
- Experience supporting go-to-market motions at scale through enablement, insights, or product advocacy
- Ability to gather, synthesize, and communicate customer and market insights to cross-functional partners
- Experience collaborating with Product Management and Engineering to support product launches, releases, or lifecycle initiatives
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to connect data, insights, and customer feedback to actionable outcomes
- Ability to influence and build alignment across teams without direct authority
What the job involves
- Product Specialists are the at-scale interface between Product, the market, and go-to-market teams
- They combine deep product expertise, market and segment fluency, competitive intelligence and customer insight to support at-scale go-to-market motions globally. Product Specialists serve as:
- Subject matter experts on product capabilities and constraints for internal stakeholders
- A bidirectional conduit between customers/go-to-market teams and Product
- Owners of competitive and buyer intelligence
- Drivers of product adoption and usage insights including market feedback
- Product Mastery
- Own the maintaining of deep, current knowledge of assigned product(s), roadmap, integrations, and constraints
- Maintain deep, current knowledge of assigned products, including core workflows, configurations, integrations, and limitations
- Stay aligned with product roadmaps, release plans, and technical dependencies
- Translate product capabilities into clear, accurate guidance for GTM and customer-facing teams
- Identify common customer misunderstandings, friction points, and misconfigurations at scale
- Act as a trusted escalation point for complex product questions that require synthesis across teams
- Competitive Intelligence
- Own functional competitive intelligence (features, workflows, tradeoffs, maturity)
- Own functional competitive intelligence for assigned products, focusing on capabilities, workflows, maturity, and tradeoffs
- Respond to internal requests for competitive information using a consistent, scalable approach
- Keep competitive intelligence current as products and markets evolve
- Market & Segment Expertise
- Own the understanding of customer needs, buying context, regulatory considerations, trends, and product positioning within assigned segment/region
- Track trends, regulatory considerations, and emerging needs relevant to assigned segments or regions
- Understand how customers evaluate, adopt, and derive value from the product over time
- Provide segment-informed input to GTM motions, enablement, and lifecycle initiatives
- Represent the customer and market perspective in cross-functional discussions
- Serve as a thought leader by presenting sessions and participating in panels at industry conferences and events (not demo booth support)
- Customer Marketing (2026)
- Own the kickstarting of product-led customer marketing via usage analytics, in-product insights, and feedback (i.e., Pendo)
- Monitor product usage and adoption trends and provide as strategy-guiding insights to GTM teams (using shared reporting tools with Product Management)
- Identify activation gaps and success patterns
- Partner with PMM/Marketing on insight-driven campaigns
- At-Scale GTM Enablement
- Support Enablement, PMM, and Knowledge Management teams with product insight, demos, and narratives
- Provide deep product insight to inform enablement programs, sales motions, and GTM strategies
- Partner with Product Marketing and Enablement to translate product capabilities into clear, accurate narratives for internal audiences
- Support the development of product demos, walkthroughs, and technical explanations used across GTM teams
- Ensure GTM materials reflect current product functionality, roadmap context, and competitive realities
- Contribute product, market, and customer insight to enablement initiatives without owning messaging or positioning
- Act as a subject-matter expert for at-scale enablement efforts, including trainings, webinars, and internal programs
- Customer & Product Insight
- Support synthesizing, and operationalizing feedback from customers, prospects, analytics, and discovery
- Leverage in-product analytics and feedback tools (e.g., Pendo) to identify usage patterns and friction points
- Gather and synthesize qualitative and quantitative customer insights to inform GTM and product decisions
- Support discovery, feedback programs, and adoption analysis at scale
- Surface insights that inform activation, adoption, and customer marketing initiatives
- Product Lifecycle
- Support betas, launches, releases, and sunsets at scale
- Partner with Product Management and Engineering to support bring-to-market motions for new and evolving products and features
- Apply product mastery, market insight, and competitive intelligence to help shape how products are introduced, explained, and adopted at scale
- Support beta programs, launches, releases, and sunsets by providing customer and market context
- Translate R&D intent into customer-facing implications, risks, and adoption considerations
- Support feedback loops from self-testing, GTM teams, and customers back into Product and Engineering
Our take
Instructure is an education technology company, creator of the Canvas Learning Management Platform that allows schools to build digital learning environments that meet the needs of their institutions. The platform simplifies teaching, elevates learning, and eliminates the headaches of supporting and growing traditional learning technologies.
The Canvas platform has grown to become a key part of a large number of educational institutions, from pre-school to higher education. Meanwhile, the company has gone international and hit the $1 billion market cap, made a number of acquisitions and invested in R&D. In fact, much of Instructure's workforce is dedicated to R&D, which shows their focus on innovating.
Instructure was itself acquired in 2024 by KKR, which supports a broad-based equity ownership program for Instructure employees. With KKR's record of acquired companies, this is a promising development. And, as the company centres a future-oriented vision and brand strategy, it will be interesting to see what it does next.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
3% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (2 rounds)
Jun 2016
$4m
SERIES A
Aug 2015
$1.5m
CONVERTIBLE
Total funding: $5.5m
Company benefits
- Join a passionate community of educators and the people working to support them
- Access to a large course library, mentoring and coaching opportunities, and regular feedback
- Community engagement (partnerships, volunteering, free learning resources, and ongoing outreach efforts)
- Office culture that values outcomes and impact above all
- Equity and ownership programs give every employee a stake in our future
- Ownership, recognition, and celebrations of shared success
- Growth opportunities (we’re all about helping our people move into (and thrive in) new roles)
Company HQ
Cottonwood Heights, UT
Leadership
Steve Daly
(CEO)They have a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a MBA in Strategy and Finance with more than 20 years experience in hardware and software industries.
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