Product Owner – MultiLit PLUS

About the position

The Product Owner for MultiLit PLUS is the functional lead for MultiLit's integrated school-partnership ecosystem. Reporting to the CIO, you will own the post-launch evolution, optimisation and operational support of MAP-it, Members Area Plus, the MultiLit eLibrary and the MultiLit PLUS Dashboard.

This is a delivery and governance-focused role. You will drive the platform's evolution by coordinating external delivery partners, owning the roadmap and release cadence, engaging with end-users and translating pedagogical requirements into clear specifications, and holding vendors accountable for delivery, quality and timelines. You will work closely with the CIO, who retains overall technical and architectural authority, and with MultiLit's research team (the MRU), the Product Development team, the School Partnerships team, Literacy Centres and other SMEs for domain expertise. As the platform grows, there is scope for the role to expand, including helping to shape and lead an internal team over time.

The role is to keep MultiLit PLUS reliable, scalable and aligned to school, research and business needs after launch as informed by stakeholders. You will make day-to-day product and delivery decisions within the agreed roadmap, budget and governance settings, escalating architectural, security, contractual or material scope decisions to the CIO and SteerCo as appropriate. You will work regularly with user stakeholders, customer service teams, technical vendors, internal operations teams and senior leaders to ensure the platform reflects school needs while remaining operationally sustainable.

About MultiLit

MultiLit is a leading provider of effective literacy instruction in Australasia, and our mission is to ensure all children learn. MultiLit publishes a range of education and literacy programs and products and supports these with comprehensive professional development courses targeting schools and teachers. MultiLit also operates literacy centres, providing tuition to students who have difficulties in becoming skilled readers.

The MultiLit business operates within 4 core business units:

• Literacy Centres – delivering tutoring services face-to-face and online to students. Currently in four locations – Macquarie Park, Bella Vista, Fortitude Valley and Subiaco.

• Professional Development and School Partnerships – providing training face-to-face and online as well as via online self-paced modules in support of MultiLit programs.

• Product development and publication sales – develops literacy programs and educational resources for release primarily to schools and to the public.

• Consultancies and contract delivery – partnering with not-for-profit organisations and governments to deliver MultiLit programs. Most recently under the Commonwealth funded Closing the Gap Initiative in partnership with 42 majority Indigenous schools across Australia

Position duties

Product Leadership, Governance & Delivery

• Lead and facilitate the MultiLit PLUS Steering Committee, reporting on platform performance, roadmap progress and strategic alignment.

• Proactively identify, escalate and help mitigate technical and timeline risks to keep the platform stable and scalable.

• Act as the primary point of contact and day-to-day owner, coordinating across internal stakeholders and external partners.

• Manage ongoing development, leading sprint planning and day-to-day coordination with external technical teams.

• Plan for high-demand periods at year-end and the start of the school year, ensuring the platform and school onboarding workflows are ready to scale.

• Conduct & coordinate the intake, testing and release of in-program and standalone assessments, keeping the roadmap on track and delivered with precision.

Vendor Coordination & Accountability

• Serve as the primary interface between MultiLit and external technical partners and development vendors.

• Hold partners accountable for delivery timelines, technical quality standards and contractual compliance (SOW management).

• Manage the release cycle, integrating updates from multiple partners smoothly and minimising regressions.

Platform Support & Operations

• Own escalations from first-line support (customer success/helpdesk), triaging bugs and user-reported issues and coordinating external partners to resolve them.

• Act as the escalation point for production issues and outages - coordinating rapid vendor response, managing service levels (SLAs), and keeping stakeholders informed, particularly during peak periods.

• Track platform performance, reliability and usage, feeding recurring issues and improvement opportunities back into the roadmap.

• Conduct functional testing and retesting of bug fixes once completed by developers, confirming issues are resolved and meet agreed requirements before release.

Requirements Engineering & SME Liaison

• Partner with user stakeholders to document detailed requirements for the high-volume intake of assessments into MAP-it.

• Communicate functional needs to external developers with the clarity they need to execute, without compromising pedagogical integrity.

• Oversee UAT so digital assessments and resources maintain research validity and design-and-copy fidelity.

Technical & Business Interface

• Rely on the CIO and technical leads for deep architectural decisions, while contributing broad technical understanding to day-to-day product and delivery discussions.

• Oversee interconnectivity between the Dashboard, MAP-it, Members Area Plus and downstream systems including HubSpot, Xero and Clerk (SSO)

What success looks like

Within the first 6-12 months, you will have:

• Established a predictable, well-governed release cadence with external vendors, with risks surfaced early for SteerCo.

• Delivered the planned MAP-it assessment roadmap on schedule, with assessments meeting research-validity and fidelity standards at UAT.

• Navigated a peak school-calendar period with the platform performing reliably under load and escalated issues resolved through vendors within agreed service levels.

• Built trusted relationships across researchers, SMEs, the CIO and external partners, so requirements flow clearly from pedagogy to code.

Experience and skills

• A strong track record of running formal project governance and delivery, including SteerCo reporting, release management, risk and issue management, and documentation across complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives.

• 5+ years as a Product Owner, Technical Program Manager, Delivery Manager or similar, ideally managing external vendors against contracts/SOWs.

• A strong ability to draw functional requirements out of non-technical SMEs and turn them into clear specifications.

• Comfortable with concepts such as API integrations, SSO and data structures, or able to get up to speed quickly. While this is not a deeply technical role, the successful candidate will need enough technical fluency to engage effectively with the CIO and developers, ask informed questions, and support practical decision-making.

• A relevant tertiary qualification (IT, business, engineering or related), or equivalent experience.

Personal Attributes

• Highly organised, with the ability to keep multiple partners and workstreams on track.

• Accountable and outcome-focused, taking genuine ownership of delivery.

• A confident, diplomatic communicator - able to hold external partners to their commitments while

• maintaining strong working relationships.

• Comfortable acting as the bridge between pedagogy and technical delivery, translating between non-technical stakeholders and SMEs and external developers.

• Proactive in identifying risks and issues and bringing forward solutions.

Desirable (not essential)

• Experience supporting a live SaaS platform, including incident management, SLA management and

• ITIL-aligned service practices.

• Experience delivering in research-driven, quality-sensitive or regulated environments (education/EdTech, health or government); direct EdTech/education experience is a plus but not essential - the domain can be learned.

• Relevant certification (e.g. PSPO/CSPO, PRINCE2, PMP or equivalent)

All offers of employment with MultiLit Pty Ltd are subject to staff signing a confidentiality agreement and providing a current Working with Children Check.

To find out more about this great opportunity, please email Ramana Kirubagaran, our Chief Information Officer, at Ramana.Kirubagaran@multilit.com or alternatively apply below.