Senior 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.

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:
 

Grade: Professional 312

Pay Range: $106,700.00 - $165,400.00

Job Description

Primary 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 job-related duties as assigned.

This job description includes a general representation of job requirements rather than a comprehensive inventory of all required responsibilities or work activities.  The contents of this document or related job requirements may change at any time with or without notice.

Qualifications

Knowledge, Skills, 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

Education          

• Bachelor’s degree 

Experience

• 4+ years of demonstrated experience working as a product manager 
• 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 

Experience in lieu of education

Equivalent relevant experience performing the essential functions of this job may substitute for education degree requirements.  Generally, equivalent relevant experience is defined as 1 year of experience for 1 year of education and is the discretion of the hiring manager.

Position & Application Details

Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (clas