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 Senior Software Product Manager position at WGU is an individual contributor role for experienced product individuals who are passionate about delighting users while delivering value to the business.  You will collaborate with a cross-functional team, including Data Scientists, ML Engineers, Architects, and product peers, to develop strategic product roadmaps that ensure a holistic end-to-end user experience.  You will build business cases, articulate strategy, and evangelize the product vision to stakeholders and cross-functional team members. You will measure and report on the efficacy of your initiatives and develop action plans accordingly. You 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.

We look for candidates who can demonstrate a history of delivering outcomes through a partnership with design, engineering and the business. Someone who, as an excellent storyteller, can represent the interests of the users they serve and influence teams to generate the outcomes that resolve their most pressing problems. We look for candidates who are collaborative by nature, empathetic to users, and are most likely to garner the trust of the stakeholders they serve.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Works closely with cross-functional teams of stakeholders, end-users, Data Scientists, ML Engineers, UX designers, and product leaders to understand problems to solve, inform the product vision, and define requirements

• Works towards creating shared outcomes with multiple teams to deliver impact for customers

• Defines product release strategies, ensuring the readiness of 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 and presents in quarterly 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

• Builds mentorship relationships and initiates guidance of newer Product Managers

• Leads research efforts to distill clarity from ambiguity and develops data collection strategies that identify the right outcomes for measuring success

• Performs other related duties as assigned.

Knowledge, Skill and Abilities:

• Understands the landscape of problems and quickly zeros in on the best strategy to achieve business outcomes

• Excellent storyteller

• Demonstrates expertise in a variety of product discovery techniques

• Looks beyond the obvious and doesn't stop at the first solution proposed

• Makes choices about priorities that clearly demonstrate an understanding of business goals, market demand, and user needs

• Ability to measure product health and use data to inform prioritization decisions, to ensure product quality and service levels, and meet defined goals and success metrics

• Inspires new ways of working and product practice techniques

• Can effectively cope with change and can shift gears comfortably

Job Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications:

• 5+ years of demonstrated experience working as a Software Product Manager

• Familiarity with AI/ML concepts and building ML experiments and products

• Experience working in Agile environments

• Excellent presentation, written and verbal communication skills

• Strong passion for exploring and understanding customer needs

• Natural leadership instincts with a positive team-building approach

• Bachelor’s degree

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in Education technology

• May have broad knowledge of project management.

As an equal opportunity employer, WGU recognizes that our strength lies in our people. We are committed to diversity.