Principal Software Product Manager

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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: Technical 412

Pay Range: $175,900.00 - $272,600.00

Job Description

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.

Job Duties

• 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.
• Writes business cases and conducts ROI and other value analyses.
• Leads and presents in quarterly planning activities.
• Defines a plan for capturing success metrics for their products and projects and consistently monitors the metrics, pivoting when the data suggests a need to do so.
• 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.
• Leads research efforts to provide clarity from ambiguity and develops data collection strategies that identify the right outcomes for measuring success.
• Uses data in storytellin