Senior Software Product Manager

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.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Works closely with 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 
• Works towards creating shared outcomes with 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 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 the 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

Competencies: 

Organizational or Student Impact:

• Follows technical/ business processes; helps support change when necessary.
• Executes complex, specialized technical projects/assignments.
• Responsible for major or many components in the area of expertise.
• Limit errors to prevent impact to client operations, costs, or schedules.

Problem Solving & Decision Making:

• Individual meets department and personal goals with little direction/ supervision.
• Leads key technical projects, programs and may facilitate leadership and development of technical teams.
• Drives project methods, techniques, and procedures.

Communication & Influence:

• Communicates with parties within and outside of the university (e.g., customers, vendors, etc.)
• Works to influence parties within and outside of the job function at an operational level regarding policies, procedures, and practices.

Leadership & Talent Management:

• Responsible for providing guidance, coaching, and training to other employees within the technical area.
• Responsible for managing significant/complex technical projects at this level, involving delegation of work and review of work products.

Job Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications:

• 5+ years of demonstrated experience working as a Software Product Manager
• Bachelor’s degree
• Experience working in Agile environments  
• Excellent presentation, written and verbal communication skills 
• Strong passion for exploring and understanding customer needs 
• Leadership instincts with a positive team building approach

Department Specific Minimum Qualifications:

Preferred Quali