Principal 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 Craft Education as the next step in your career.

Craft Education is on a mission to solve skilled labor shortages by powering work-based learning pathways for all.

At Craft, we're revolutionizing the apprenticeship degree, combining on-the-job learning with accredited instruction to create innovative educational pathways that accommodate working professionals and meet employer needs. Our flagship product - Craft Connect - helps organizations administer apprentice degree programs and address mission-critical data and reporting needs. Through the same platform, Craft is also transforming how on-the-job learning converts into academic credits.

Our team of technology, education and workforce professionals also provides technical assistance to organizations looking to launch and manage apprenticeship degree programs. We are working tirelessly to accelerate the expansion of these programs along with the data infrastructure that underpins them.

If you're looking to join the work-based learning revolution, we'd love to talk with you. At Craft, you'll have the opportunity to solve hard problems in a high-growth startup environment and make a lasting impact on the future of education and workforce development. We couldn't be more excited to advance this work as a team of innovative, collaborative and mission-oriented professionals - we hope you'll consider joining us.

• 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.
• Participates in, presents during, and sometimes leads 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.
• Actively mentors and initiates guidance of less-experienced Product Managers through formalized mentorship assignments.
• Partners closely with researchers and analysts to understand the holistic user experience and gain a better understanding of user behavior to identify new opportunities, generating insights that are relevant to more teams than just their domain.
• Uses data in storytelling to influence decisions around the right outcomes to be delivered at the right time.
• 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

• Product evangelist internally and externally.
• Ability to reimagine a product space and bring it to life.
• Understands and guides thinking about monetization of product opportunities.
• Ability to evaluate the impact of trade-off decisions to ensure we are delivering the greatest value to the customer at the right time.
• Future-oriented and can articulately paint credible pictures and visions of possibilities and likelihoods.
• Ability to coordinate and seek opportunities to align and partner with other product teams throughout the organization.
• Inspires new ways of working and product practices techniques.
• Ability to share learned insights and best practices across teams and externally to the product department.
• Ability to lead and influence other managers and their staff despite not having direct reports.
• Excellent presentation, written, and verbal communication skills to an executive audience.
• Strong passion for exploring and understanding customer needs.
• Natural leadership instincts, with a positive team building approach.
• Breadth and dept in product discovery techniques and knows when to use what.

• Bachelor's degree in a related field

Experience

• 10 years of demonstrated experience working as a Software Product Manager, Product Owner, or Group Product Manager, with at least 3 years of those as a Senior or Group Product Manager.
• Professional Product Certification (e.g. Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Pragmatic Marketing)
• Experience working in Agile environments.
• Experience managing multiple types of problems at the same time.

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.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in a related field
• Experience in Education Technology
• Certified in Change Management

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:

How to apply: apply online

Full-time Regular Positions(FT classification, standard working hours = 40)

This is a full-time, regular position that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

The University is 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.