What Roles Exist at EdTech Companies?

If you’re looking for a role with an EdTech company, you may see job titles and descriptions that feel similar to others but sound different in the way they’re written. Additionally, if you have a background in education, you may see a certain job title and think, “I did that every day.”

However, if you’re new to EdTech roles and responsibilities, you’ll quickly learn that companies can talk about similar roles differently and that not every job in EdTech is what you first think.

To help you navigate this complexity, we compiled roles and responsibilities from a variety of EdTech companies (including our own) to help clarify what you can generally expect from common types of roles.

We hope this overview helps you gain clarity on the major roles and responsibilities in EdTech so you can better understand which role(s) may suit you best.

Customer-Facing Roles

To begin, let’s look at the types of roles that engage with both prospective and existing customers. While many roles can be classified as customer-facing, we’ve identified three main categories: sales, customer success, and professional development.

1. Sales

EdTech sales are all about forming relationships with school- and district-level decision-makers through virtual or in-person meetings to identify a problem that can be solved by purchasing the company’s product or service.

Different EdTech companies use different titles for their sales team members, so other sales-related titles you may see include: account executive, partnerships representative, field representative, sales director, and sales representative. Take note that when a sales role is called “partnerships” or “partners,” it is not necessarily working with community members; rather, it will likely be establishing relationships (i.e., partnerships) with decision-makers in districts.

You may enjoy a sales role if you can navigate complex discussions, build relationships with a diverse set of people, are organized and detail-oriented, or have an entrepreneurial spirit. Also, sales roles typically include travel as a requirement, so be sure to check the estimated travel time listed on the job description before you apply to ensure the travel requirements work with your lifestyle.

Oscar Avilés is a District Partnerships Manager at Goalbook. Prior to joining Goalbook, Oscar was an elementary school teacher. After mentoring first-year teachers, he understood that “our teachers needed internal and external champions to support them as they strived to provide equitable learning opportunities for their students.” That was when he first began exploring opportunities to be an external champion of teachers in the private sector, which led him to Goalbook. To read more about Oscar’s transition to EdTech, including his suggestions to make traveling for work smooth and sustainable, click here.

2. Customer Success

Customer Success roles are relationship-focused positions that specialize in working with customers (school or district administrators) to ensure they have a positive experience with the company’s products and services. Additionally, in some EdTech companies, the customer success role works on sales renewals for existing customers.

This role may provide customer training and support for the product. As a result of working closely with customers, a person in this role may collect, leverage, and analyze customer usage data to maximize customer engagement and usage. This role seeks to understand and improve the customer experience and lifecycle to ensure customers have effective implementations and achieve their desired goals.

Kia Britt is a District and School Customer Success Manager at Goalbook. Kia knew a customer success role was right for her because she worked closely with district leaders and coached teachers in her previous roles. Kia says, “I knew if I were to transition to the private sector, I still wanted to have an impact and touchpoint with those leading the work at district and school sites.”

Like Kia, you may also enjoy a customer success role if you like building relationships, interacting with school or district administrators, and data analysis. You can read more about Kia’s transition from the classroom to EdTech by clicking here.

3. Professional Development

Similar to customer success, the professional development role often provides ongoing, virtual or in-person support and data analysis. However, a key differentiator between customer success and professional development is that in the latter, the person is in a content development and delivery role.

The professional development role will be focused on creating training content and teaching users how to use the company’s product. This role uses market feedback, product evolution, research, and input from stakeholders to guide and update professional development and training courses.

For example, a person in a professional development role may create a series of courses around a topic so the company can offer those courses to customers. The types of courses may include the development of a new skill, staying up to date on trends in pedagogy, or career advancement.

You may enjoy a professional development role if you: like developing curriculum and learning experiences for adult learners, try to stay up to date with the latest and best instructional strategies, and are a high-level thinker who can create and deliver engaging courses.

Content Development (Curriculum Development) Roles

If you love creating and planning curricula or learning experiences for learners, a job in content may be for you. In the EdTech sector, there is a difference between curriculum development, content design, and instructional design, so let’s take a quick look at each of these roles and then learn a helpful hint to understand the main difference between them.

1. Curriculum Development

A curriculum developer will create or update curricula to improve student learning outcomes. This role may work with school districts or states on creating curricula that align with specific state standards and guidelines. If you are interested in a curriculum development role, be sure to research if the company has student-facing, teacher-facing, or student- and teacher-facing products because this will influence what kind of curriculum is created.

2. Content Design

One function of content design is creating the original subject matter that goes into a course or curriculum. This is another title that may vary depending on the company and the type of product they produce, so it’s important to do your research before applying to a content design position.

3. Instructional Design

Instructional design is an interdisciplinary field that draws on science, human-computer interaction, educational psychology, systems theory, and more. An instructional designer considers how educational tools should be designed, created, and delivered to learners (both children and adults). Some skills required for this position are: applying theory and learning science; data analysis; writing clear copy/scripts/storyboards; layout design; and communicating with stakeholders.

It’s worth noting that instructional design is not a lateral move from the classroom to the private sector. Instructional design is not the same as lesson planning or using Understanding by Design to plan a unit.

If an instructional design role interests you, you may need to acquire some additional skills before applying. One possible path to getting the skills and knowledge-base this role needs is to look into courses that are either free or inexpensive on LinkedIn Learning, YouTube, or Coursera.

Helpful Hint:

Here’s one way to think about the differences between Curriculum Development and Instructional Design:

• Curriculum Development is about creating educational courses and focusing on what students will learn and what can be improved.
• Instructional Design focuses on how students will learn, the course plans, and the learning process and how to improve them.

Other similar job titles related to Content Development are: content contributor, content specialist, content analyst, and content developer.

Hannah Adera Rooney is a Math Content Analyst at Goalbook. Hannah shares, “The biggest draw of the Content Analyst role was the fact that I would get the chance to spend most of my time thinking about math content, how it should be taught, and how to make that accessible to teachers.” To learn more about Hannah’s role in content and what else drew her into this role at Goalbook, click here.

Marketing Roles

Marketing is the action a company takes to attract an audience to their products and services. Marketing roles primarily focus on using words, graphics, images, or videos to provide relevant information to existing customers and prospective customers so they can learn about a product and make informed decisions. Marketing embodies a wide variety of different domains, such as digital advertising, content marketing, email marketing, web design, and product marketing to name a few.

If you have a background teaching or studying psychology, art, history, English, or other subjects in the humanities, a marketing role may be a good option for you because the skills and knowledge you taught or studied can often be applied directly to marketing work.

As a personal example, I am a former English teacher, and Goalbook hired me as their first full-time marketing writer. I knew marketing for an EdTech company was right for me because I could combine my passions for education and writing into one role. My manager, Patrick, said my teaching experience and how authentically I could talk about Goalbook’s products and professional development were reasons I was a good fit for this position.

A benefit of coming from education to working in marketing for an EdTech company is that you have likely been the target audience for the company’s products, and you know about teachers and administrators, so you can relate authentically to the educator experience.

Human Resources Roles

Just as in any other organization, human resource roles in EdTech take care of employees and employee-related matters. Human Resources encompasses administrative work in addition to recruiting, hiring, creating policies, and training of personnel. Alternative titles you may see for Human Resources are: talent acquisition, talent management, or people operations. You may enjoy a role in Human Resources if you enjoy solving problems, building career paths, and supporting others to boost engagement and productivity.

1. Learning and Development

A learning and development role is often part of the Human Resources department. This role empowers employees by helping them develop specific skills, knowledge, and competencies to perform better at work. Learning and development specialists assess employees’ needs and propose solutions to meet those needs through professional development, setting up training, and creating training materials.

You may enjoy this role if you’re passionate about helping people learn and grow. Other skills needed include a knowledge and understanding of adult learning, curriculum development, and problem-solving skills.

2. Sourcer

A sourcer searches for potential job candidates that have not actively applied to a role through a job board or a corporate website. The sourcer assesses and engages with potential candidates to create interest in the company and hopefully turn them into applicants. A great sourcer knows how to do market research before even starting the search and can use many tools, such as LinkedIn, to find the best talent.

3. Recruiter

Like a sourcer, a recruiter can do passive sourcing, strategic sourcing, and sourcing via an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to know how to identify and then qualify potential candidates. They run operations and logistics in the interview process (from screening, selection, and hiring) to ensure it runs smoothly. Recruiters work to build relationships and create a great candidate experience; they are the expert liaison between candidates and the hiring team. They also advise on job descriptions, interview questions, compensation, and interview compliance, among many other things.

Since not all companies have a sourcer for a recruiter to partner with, being a “full cycle recruiter” can be a valuable skill set. “Full cycle” means a recruiter is able to execute the recruiting process from start to finish.

You may like a role as a sourcer or recruiter if you have strong written and verbal communication skills, you’re extremely organized, and you’re able to manage multiple, competing priorities and projects simultaneously. In addition, you may also enjoy these roles if you enjoy building authentic relationships and listening to others.

If you’re new to the EdTech space, it’s easy to feel confused by different descriptions or like multiple roles are calling your name. Knowing some of the roles in EdTech can help you narrow down your focus and job search so that you are applying for roles that you are not only qualified for, but that also play to your strengths and greatest career interests.

For more information on how to prepare to apply to EdTech jobs, check out our post “How to Prepare for Your EdTech Job Application Journey — Insights and Suggestions from an EdTech Recruiter.”

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