Principal Software Product Manager

at  Western Governors University

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.
Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.
The Principal Software Product Manager is the most senior individual contributor role within the Product organization. They will collaborate with a cross-functional team and product peers to develop strategic product roadmaps that ensure a holistic end-to-end user experience. Working with some of the most challenging problems to solve, they will build business cases, articulate strategy, and evangelize the product vision to stakeholders and cross-functional team members. The Principal Software Product Manager will measure and report on the efficacy of initiatives and develop action plans accordingly. They will make hard, high-stakes trade-offs between features, choosing those that are most likely to ensure that both business goals and user needs are met. The work will typically span multiple product domains and requires a high level of collaboration and the ability to make pragmatic decisions while influencing others to support other decisions.
Responsibilities

Primary Responsibilities

• Owns the most difficult products/strategies that span multiple product domains and requires high levels of coordination and collaboration.
• Works directly with senior and executive leaders to understand their most pressing problems and help them develop the most effective strategy to solve those problems.
• Leads cross-functional Steering Committees to update and track strategy, ensure alignment with business metrics and goals, and communicate the strategic roadmap.
• Works closely with a cross-functional team of stakeholders, end-users, engineers, UX designers, and product leaders to understand the problems to solve, inform the product vision, and define requirements.
• Leads cross-functional collaboration at the senior level to deliver outcomes and is a go-to person for questions and guidance related to product work.
• Designs experiments to test customer tradeoffs – between user experience, technology constraints, and business value.
• Analyzes the impact of their product domain features on key business outcomes.
• Connects domain data to the experience journey and user and business OKRs/KPIs.
• Leads efforts to create shared outcomes across multiple teams to deliver impact for customers.
• Defines product release strategies, ensuring the readiness of the various business partners.
• Becomes the expert for their product, demonstrating mastery of the current platform with an understanding of gaps that inform their near-term product roadmap and contribute to long-term strategy.
• Manages expectations by understanding when initiatives are at risk and proactively communicating with stakeholders.
• Participates in, presents during, and sometimes leads planning activities.
• Ensures product quality by testing software features to ensure they satisfy the acceptance criteria and work with stakeholders and end users to coordinate user acceptance testing activities.
• Actively mentors and initiates guidance of less-experienced Product Managers through formalized mentorship assignments.
• Partners closely with researchers and analysts to understand the holistic user experience and gain a better understanding of user behavior to identify new opportunities, generating insights that are relevant to more teams than just their domain.
• Uses data in storytelling to influence decisions around the right outcomes to be delivered at the right time.
• Performs other job-related duties as assigned.

Qualifications

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Product evangelist internally and externally.
• Ability to reimagine a product space and bring it to life.
• Understands and guides thinking about monetization of product opportunities.
• Ability to evaluate the impact of trade-off decisions to ensure we are delivering the greatest value to the customer at the right time.
• Future-oriented and can articulately paint credible pictures and visions of possibilities and likelihoods.
• Ability to coordinate and seek opportunities to align and partner with other product teams throughout the organization.
• Inspires new ways of working and product practices techniques.
• Ability to share learned insights and best practices across teams and externally to the product department.
• Ability to lead and influence other managers and their staff despite not having direct reports.
• Excellent presentation, written, and verbal communication skills to an executive audience.
• Strong passion for exploring and understanding customer needs.
• Natural leadership instincts, with a positive team building approach.
• Breadth and dept in product discovery techniques and knows when to use what.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in a related field

Experience

Minimum Qualifications

• 10 years of demonstrated experience working as a Software Product Manager, Product Owner, or Group Product Manager, with at least 3 years of those as a Senior or Group Product Manager.
• Professional Product Certification (e.g. Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Pragmatic Marketing)
• Experience working in Agile environments.
• Experience managing multiple types of problems at the same time.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in a related field
• Experience in Education Technology
• Certified in Change Management

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.
At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:
Pay Range: $175,900.00 - $272,600.00
WGU will accept applications for this position until 12:00 AM ET, 12/16/2024
How to apply: apply online
Full-time Regular Positions (FT classification, standard working hours = 40)
This is a full-time, regular position that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.
The University is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status

• Owns the most difficult products/strategies that span multiple product domains and requires high levels of coordination and collaboration.
• Works directly with senior and executive leaders to understand their most pressing problems and help them develop the most effective strategy to solve those problems.
• Leads cross-functional Steering Committees to update and track strategy, ensure alignment with business metrics and goals, and communicate the strategic roadmap.
• Works closely with a cross-functional team of stakeholders, end-users, engineers, UX designers, and product leaders to understand the problems to solve, inform the product vision, and define requirements.
• Leads cross-functional collaboration at the senior level to deliver outcomes and is a go-to person for questions and guidance related to product work.
• Designs experiments to test customer tradeoffs – between user experience, technology constraints, and business value.
• Analyzes the impact of their product domain features on key business outcomes.
• Connects domain data to the experience journey and user and business OKRs/KPIs.
• Leads efforts to create shared outcomes across multiple teams to deliver impact for customers.
• Defines product release strategies, ensuring the readiness of the various business partners.
• Becomes the expert for their product, demonstrating mastery of the current platform with an understanding of gaps that inform their near-term product roadmap and contribute to long-term strategy.
• Manages expectations by understanding when initiatives are at risk and proactively communicating with stakeholders.
• Participates in, presents during, and sometimes leads planning activities.
• Ensures product quality by testing software features to ensure they satisfy the acceptance criteria and work with stakeholders and end users to coordinate user acceptance testing activities.
• Actively mentors and initiates guidance of less-experienced Product Managers through formalized mentorship assignments.
• Partners closely with researchers and analysts to understand the holistic user experience and gain a better understanding of user behavior to identify new opportunities, generating insights that are relevant to more teams than just their domain.
• Uses data in storytelling to influence decisions around the right outcomes to be delivered at the right time.
• Performs other job-related duties as assigned