Public Funding Operations Manager

The Company:

Outschool’s mission is to inspire kids to love learning. In our fast-changing world, the traditional educational system struggles to meet the diverse and evolving needs of young learners. Outschool reimagines this system, offering flexible and engaging learning experiences as a supplement and alternative to traditional education. By connecting learners with a global community of teachers and peers through our online platform, we make learning personal, dynamic, and deeply human.

We've made significant strides since launching our marketplace of live online classes in 2017. Finding initial success with secular homeschoolers, we then expanded to enrichment learning to meet the needs of a wider audience, growing our business 16x since 2019. Post-pandemic, we have evolved our platform to power academic learning, incorporated AI, and have begun to grow our international community. We're proud to have served over 1.5M passionate learners with more than $100M in annual bookings.

Driving disruptive, positive change in education is rewarding and hard. Outschool team members are encouraged to challenge themselves, take risks, and grow in their careers. We look for talented people whose sense of urgency, innate curiosity, and determination to drive impact will help Outschool achieve outsized results in pursuit of our mission. We invite you to be part of an ambitious team dedicated to ensuring every learner can navigate the future with curiosity, resilience, and a love of learning.

The Role

Outschool is expanding the ways families can access and use education funding to support their children's learning. We're looking for a Public Funding Operations Manager to ensure the systems, processes, and partner relationships supporting these programs work reliably and efficiently as our business grows.

This hands-on role will initially focus on Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), with opportunities to expand into the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit (FSTC), scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs), and other state and federal education funding programs.

You'll serve as the primary day-to-day operational contact for funding partners, including ESA wallet providers, scholarship-granting organizations, and program administrators. You'll manage the processes supporting transactions, payments, reimbursements, refunds, and reconciliations while coordinating with Product and Engineering to maintain reliable partner integrations.

You'll work closely with our Public Funding Strategy Director and Business Development leadership to support new funding opportunities, operationalize partnerships, and ensure new programs are ready to launch and scale. You'll also collaborate with Finance, Customer Experience, Legal, and Compliance to resolve issues, improve workflows, and deliver a seamless experience for families.

We're looking for a hands-on problem solver who combines operational rigor, technical aptitude, attention to detail, and strong partner relationship skills. You'll be someone who takes ownership of problems, anticipates issues, and continuously looks for ways to make operations more reliable and efficient.

Core Responsibilities:

• Manage funding partner operations: Serve as the primary operational contact for ESA wallet providers, scholarship organizations, state program administrators, and other funding partners. Maintain strong working relationships, coordinate day-to-day activities, and resolve operational issues.

• Support partner onboarding and launches: Work with Business Development and Strategy to coordinate the operational onboarding and activation of new funding partners and programs, ensuring requirements, workflows, and systems are ready.

• Manage transactions and reimbursements: Oversee operational processes for purchases, payments, reimbursements, refunds, cancellations, and reconciliations. Work with Finance and Customer Experience to investigate and resolve discrepancies and exceptions.

• Maintain partner integrations: Coordinate with Product and Engineering to support reliable integrations with wallet providers and funding platforms, troubleshoot technical issues, and help test and implement system improvements.

• Improve operational processes: Identify opportunities to streamline workflows, reduce manual effort, improve accuracy, and scale operations through automation and better tools.

• Ensure operational readiness and compliance: Work with Legal, Compliance, Finance, and Operations to implement partner and program requirements, maintain documented procedures, and support ongoing participation in funding programs.

• Coordinate cross-functional issue resolution: Proactively identify operational risks and work with internal teams and external partners to resolve issues before they materially affect families or program performance.

• Monitor operational performance: Track transaction success rates, refund processing times, reconciliation accuracy, integration reliability, and partner issue resolution. Use performance data to identify recurring problems and drive improvements.

Desired Experience & Skills:

• Experience in operations, partner operations, payments operations, financial operations, or related roles.

• Demonstrated ability to manage complex operational workflows, troubleshoot issues, and improve processes.

• Experience working directly with external partners, vendors, or platform providers on day-to-day operational matters.

• Comfort working with technical systems, integrations, transaction data, and operational reporting.

• Strong organizational skills, attention to detail, and the ability to independently manage competing priorities.

• Ability to collaborate effectively with Product, Engineering, Finance, Customer Experience, and other functional teams.

• Strong communication skills and a practical, service-oriented approach to partner relationships and problem-solving.

• Experience improving operational efficiency through process optimization, automation, or technology.

Other Considerations:

• Familiarity with ESA programs, education funding, scholarship organizations, or wallet providers.

• Experience with payment processing, reimbursements, refunds, financial reconciliations, or transaction operations.

• Experience supporting third-party platform integrations or API-based workflows.

• Experience in online marketplaces, fintech, edtech, or technology-enabled services businesses.

• Familiarity with workflow automation and AI-enabled operational tools.

• Previous experience in startups or high-growth companies.

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: This position is not available in this pay zone

US Tier 2: $130,760 - $145,000

US Tier 3: $124,200 - $138,000

Benefits & Culture:

At Outschool, we believe that taking care of one another enables us to do our best work. To us that means:

• Shared Financial Success: Competitive salaries, stock options, and retirement plans.

• Health: Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance.

• Wellness: Annual wellness stipend, access to coaching & therapy, and pet wellness plans.

• PTO & Family Benefits: Generous PTO and family leave policies.

• Hybrid & Remote-Friendly: Outschool has a distributed team across the U.S. and Canada and an office in San Francisco. Bay Area-based employees work in the office part of the week and receive commute-related benefits. Team members outside the Bay Area remain fully remote, with support for expensable home office setup and internet to stay connected no matter where you are.

• Lifelong Learners: Annual budgets for professional development and DEI learning; budgets for children to take Outschool classes.

• Community Impact: Outschool matches employee donations to eligible charities and supports Outschool.org’s nonprofit programs.

Outschool is an equal opportunity employer. We view diversity as a moral imperative and competitive advantage. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We plan and structure our interviews to directly assess skills and experience.

If you require a reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact [email protected].

Benefits packages are included for full-time employees only. Please note benefits and perks may vary for employees based outside of the US and Canada.

Full-time employees must be a citizen or legal residents of the U.S. or Canada and reside in U.S. or Canada, unless specifically indicated otherwise.

Once you submit your application, Outschool will process your personal data to evaluate your candidacy for employment. Unless specifically indicated otherwise, we hire employees only in the U.S. and Canada. Applicants else where should be aware that we may discard your application upon submission or we may ask if you would like us to retain it later should there be consideration (this is not typical at all). If you are selected for interviewing, your data will be shared with interviewers and personnel involved in that process. If not hired, your application will be retained for one year in case there is another suitable role. You may opt out of this at any time. Please see our Employee/Applicant Privacy Notice for more detailed information. If applicable, as you progress through the process, we will be clear about what information is being asked for and what happens with that information.