Senior Manager, Technical Product Management

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 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:

Job Description

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Leads a team of product managers to execute on the vision/roadmaps for the portfolio, ensuring delivery goals and quality goals are met.
• Collaborates with senior leaders on product strategy and the long-term roadmap for the platform and the portfolio.
• Hires, develops, and inspires each individual to do their best work and foster team collaboration and enforce best practices.
• Collaborates with key stakeholders, product managers, engineering directors and other leaders on portfolio prioritization, balancing stakeholder initiative level priorities with portfolio health needs to maximize value and minimize risk.
• Leads portfolio planning including balancing intra-portfolio priorities with dependencies from other portfolios to sequence upcoming work.
• Leads portfolio Steering Committees with key stakeholders to provide transparency and elevate key decisions and issues to "steer" the portfolio in the best direction possible
• Actively works to resolve blockers and risks for the portfolio and leads teams to validate assumptions and analyze and communicate trade-offs to guide portfolio decisions.
• Be the domain expert on the portfolio, including the technology used, integrations and dependencies. Knowledgeable on how the associated products are used in the industry and understand the latest relevant technologies, vendors, innovations, and forward-thinking trends.
• Collaborates with engineering and business leaders on buy/build decisions, the selection and sourcing of WGU software and provides leadership to the RFI and RFP vendor selection process.
• Utilizes customer feedback, market research and industry data to inform product technology strategy.
• Leads in the development and launch of products and services for students and staff-facing solution.
• Maintains and builds relationships with business owners, stakeholders, team members and key vendors.
• Accountable for ensuring portfolio KPIs and service levels meet defined goals and measure of success targets and uses data to inform/defend prioritization decisions.
• Shared accountability with engineering for portfolio health and product quality and leading team in product stabilization, performance, and proactive monitoring and improvements
• Participates in product management leadership meetings and decision making.
• Performs other related duties as assigned.

Knowledge, Skill and Abilities:

• Expertise in setting strategic direction and synthesizing multiple initiatives and products together to deliver on outcomes.
• Demonstrated experience working in the Agile Scrum framework with complex products and multiple teams.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and prepared to act with incomplete information.
• Excellent communication and people skills
• Thrives working collaboratively as part of a team in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong leadership skills with the ability to effectively influence, persuade and negotiate with multiple levels including executive leadership.
• Understanding of technical concepts and ability to communicate them to non-technical audiences.
• Analytical and quantitative skills to use data and metrics to back up assumptions, surface recommendations and drive decisions. Ability to clearly communicate these data insights to others.

Competencies:

Organizational Impact:

• Develops plan to accomplish division or job area responsibilities that align with department.
• Performance may affect department results.
• Work requires some knowledge of the University to recognize impact of decisions made.
• Compiles data to prepare budgets.

Problem Solving and Decision Making:

• Responsible for making improvements of processes or systems to enhance performance of the job area.
• Accountable for coordinating activities and maintaining relationships with internal (and occasionally external) parties.
• Assignments received and problems faced are broad and undefined, and require use of analytical concepts, investigation, and knowledge from prior experience.

Communication and Influence:

• Communicates within job area and often with external groups and external facing professionals (i.e. Admissions)
• Communicates frequently with external groups on routine and more complex matters.
• Ensures compliance with university policies and procedures within job area and may influence others outside of job area to justify and gain cooperation for policies, practices, and procedures.

Leadership and Talent Management:

• Manages a team of professionals. Manages the work of assigned employees and/or supervisors who generally exercise some latitude and independence in their assignments.
• Ensures proper training of team members, and actively participates in hiring, firing, and promotion decisions. Conducts performance reviews and recommends salary reviews.
• Primarily achieves goals through leading a team.

Job Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent.
• 7 years of demonstrated experience as a software Product Manager, Product Owner, or Group Product Manager.
• Requirements for specific software experience will vary based on available product positions.
• Experience directly leading and managing a team.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's degree
• Experience in Education technology, higher education, or related market.
• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) or other equivalent certification (e.g. Pragmatic Marketing)
• Certified in change management.

Position & Application Details

How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.

Additional Information

Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It's not all-inclusive.

Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at recruiting@wgu.edu.

Equal Opportunity Employer: We are 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. #DEI