Public Funding Project Lead
About this role
The Role
Outschool is on a path to become the leading Education Savings Account (ESA) platform in the country. Over the past few years we built the operations and systems that made that growth possible — entering new funding marketplaces, standing up reimbursement, and serving families across a fast-growing set of state programs. As the public-funding program matures from building new systems to running and scaling them, we’re creating this role to be the connective tissue that keeps it all moving — and continually makes it run better and scale.
The Public Funding Project Lead leads cross-functional execution across Customer Experience, Marketing, Legal, Finance, and Product — turning strategy into coordinated, on-time delivery for launches, new-program onboarding, and reimbursement expansion. Just as importantly, you’ll be our internal expert on the ESA family: the person who lives and breathes the persona and makes sure everything we ship reflects how these families actually navigate their funding. You’ll also lead our push to use AI to work faster and more efficiently, turning manual processes into scalable automations.
As the program’s work distributes to teams across the company, you’ll be the point person who keeps a multi-team effort aligned, spots risks before they become problems, brings deep ESA expertise to bear on our strategy, and raises the bar on how we execute.
Core Responsibilities:
Lead cross-functional execution of public-funding and ESA initiatives across CX, Marketing, Legal, Finance, and Product — translating strategy into coordinated project plans, clear owners, and on-time delivery.
Build trusted working relationships with the owners in each function — CX, Marketing, Legal, Finance, and Product — well enough to understand their real constraints and broker tradeoffs.
Act as Outschool’s internal ESA-family expert, bringing the lived persona into product, go-to-market, and support decisions, and pressure-testing our messaging and experience before it reaches families.
Own the project-management systems and operating cadence for the public-funding program — roadmaps, dependencies, status tracking, and clear decision-making across teams.
Drive and coordinate AI-enabled efficiency — identify and (with engineering as needed) build automations such as order-fulfillment and invoicing workflows that reduce manual effort and help the program scale.
Continuously look for ways to improve and scale ESA operations — spotting inefficiencies and bottlenecks, streamlining and automating workflows, and building processes that hold up as volume grows.
Keep our distributed operating model coordinated: ensure the teams that own individual pieces of public funding stay aligned, and proactively surface and resolve risks.
Partner with the Partnerships Lead to coordinate the internal execution of partner-driven launches, keeping Product, CX, Legal, and Finance aligned as new partners and programs come online.
Desired Experience & Skills:
Proven project or program management experience leading cross-functional initiatives to on-time, on-budget delivery.
A track record of acting as a trusted partner across functions — not just tracking a plan, but building enough credibility with each team that they bring you problems early.
Comfortable working through disagreement: can surface competing priorities between teams, facilitate toward a decision, and communicate tradeoffs and risks to stakeholders clearly, even without formal authority.
Strong operational and process orientation, with the ability to turn ambiguous, fast-changing requirements into clear, repeatable workflows.
A track record of not just running operations but improving them — finding efficiencies and building processes that scale with growth.
Demonstrated use of AI tools to speed up delivery and improve efficiency.
Deep understanding of — or the ability to quickly ramp on — the ESA, public-funding, and homeschooling landscape and the families it serves.
Other Considerations:
Lived experience with ESAs, homeschooling, or education-choice programs
Previous EdTech or online-marketplace experience
Previous experience in startups, especially in the hypergrowth phase
Compensation:
Outschool recruits across the US and Canada, and sets employee salaries to reflect local compensation and cost of living. In addition to base compensation, this role is eligible for equity and benefits. Additional details are provided during the interview process.
This role is available in the following US Pay Zones:
US Tiers
US Tier 1: San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, and Seattle Metro
US Tier 2: All California excluding San Francisco Bay Area, Boston Metro, Chicago Metro, Denver Metro, Austin Metro, Portland Metro
US Tier 3: All other cities and states
US Pay Zones
US Tier 1: $165,600 - $227,700
US Tier 2: $140,760 - $193,545
US Tier 3: $124,200 - $170,775
Company at a glance
Outschool is an online learning marketplace built around kids' actual interests, not a standardized curriculum or a system that decides what they should learn when.
We connect families with live and self-paced classes across thousands of subjects, taught by teachers who chose this path because they love what they teach. Whether your kid is exploring something brand new, doubling down on a passion, or learning in a way that works for their brain, we're here to make that possible.
We work with families pursuing every kind of alternative education: homeschoolers, ESA families, hybrid learners, and parents building something custom. We work with neurodivergent kids. We work with kids learning at their own pace. We work with families who've tried traditional school and want something different.
The best learning happens when kids are curious. When a teacher is genuinely excited about what they're teaching. When a parent trusts their instincts about their child's education. We're here to make that easier. Follow us to see what families are building, what teachers are creating, and what we're learning along the way.
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