Staff Software Product Manager, Personalization

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

Role Overview:

At WGU, we are changing lives for the better by creating pathways to opportunity. We believe in the inherent worth and ability of every individual, and in the transformative power of education. We measure our success by the success of our graduates, with degree programs designed to multiply economic returns over the life of a graduate's career.

WGU is the largest online university in the United States. As a not-for-profit digital university, we are positioned to drive innovation that centers students, fostering success one student at a time.

As the Staff Software Product Manager for Personalization, you will play a key role in advancing this mission.

Students succeed through learning experiences that...

• balance recommended structure with personalized flexibility

• build habits fostering momentum and incremental progress

• respond to academic challenges with personalized learning support

• continually help students navigate toward their goals.

As the Staff Software Product Manager for Personalization, you have a track record of successfully driving user behavior in a consumer-facing product. You have a hypothesis-driven mindset and facilitate data-driven decision-making conversations. You have a fierce experience perspective. You contribute expertise in data analysis and AI/ML to collaborations with Product peers, UX partners, architects, and engineers. You lead by influence, working adeptly on matrixed teams. You are a compelling storyteller, proficient at building rapport and gaining alignment with executive stakeholders.

In this role you will...

• Lead the Holistic Product strategy for understanding each student's goals, strengths, challenges, accomplishments, preferences, and behaviors throughout the journey. Deliver experience persistence, operational self-service, program retention, learning outcomes, and satisfaction.

• Collaborate with matrixed Product teams to incrementally discover personalization experiences that deliver on key metrics using behavioral insights, A/B testing, and analytics dashboards.

• Collaborate with Data Services and AI/ML Engineering to develop integrated roadmaps aligning the technical capabilities required to deliver those experiences.

• Build relationships with executive academic stakeholders, supporting their initiatives for AI innovations with testing strategies and tools, and road-mapping proven innovations into the platform.

The Staff Software Product Manager for Personalization reports to the Director of Product for Holistic Experiences. This team collaborates with Domain, College, and Core Services Product teams to create strategic and technical frameworks that ensure consistently best-in-class experiences for students and staff across WGU.

The position is on-site at WGU's Salt Lake City campus. Relocation support is available.

Job Description:

The Staff Software Product Manager at WGU is an individual contributor role for an experienced and highly technical product professional. They play a key role in the software development process, bridging the gap between technical expertise and product strategy. They should possess a holistic understanding of both technology and business to lead successful software product initiatives.

You will collaborate with a cross-functional teams, product peers, and enterprise architecture and engineering to develop strategic product roadmaps that ensure a holistic end-to-end user experience. You will build business cases, articulate strategy, and evangelize the product vision to stakeholders and cross-functional team members. You will measure and report on the efficacy of your initiatives and develop action plans accordingly. You 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.

We look for candidates who can demonstrate a history of delivering outcomes through a partnership with design, engineering, architecture, and the business. Someone who, as an excellent storyteller, can represent the interests of the users they serve and influence teams to generate the outcomes that resolve their most pressing problems. We look for candidates who are collaborative by nature, empathetic to users, and are most likely to garner the trust of the stakeholders they serve.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Works closely with cross functional team of stakeholders, end-users, engineers, enterprise architects, and product leaders to understand the problems to solve, help drive the product vision and define requirements. Plays a key role in the software development process, bridging the gap between technical expertise and product strategy.

• Creates shared outcomes with multiple teams to deliver impact for customers.

• Recognized expert for their product, demonstrating mastery of the current platform with an deep understanding of gaps that inform their near-term product roadmap and helps to establish long-term strategy.

• Manages expectations by understanding when initiatives are at risk and proactively communicating with stakeholders.

• Leads 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.

• Mentors and guides 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:

• Possesses a deep understanding and technical background in Service Oriented Architecture, data analytics, machine learning, AI, and NLP/LLMs

• An ability to create artifacts that provide visual and narrative detail of workflow and technical requirements, decisions, and designs to provide linkage between architecture, engineering, infrastructure, enterprise security, and feature-driven product teams.

• Able to easily communicate technical issues and business requirements and value-based outcomes.

• Develop technology modernization roadmaps that enable constant iterative improvements that correspond with operational and business requirements of the university.

• Understand and learn the nature of a legacy enterprise platform architecture with all of the nuances required to build bridges for future capabilities while maintaining current operational excellence.

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 their area of expertise.

• Limit errors to prevent impact to client operations, costs, or schedules.

Job Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, data science, or a related field or equivalent experience.

• 7 years of senior product management experience on SaaS products utilizing data analytics and ML for recommendations or personalization.

• The ability to think strategically about product architecture, align it with business goals, and make decisions that have a long-term impact on product development and success.

• Leadership instincts with a positive team building approach.

• Responsible for managing significant/complex technical projects at this level, involving delegation of work and review of work products.

• Experience working in Agile environments.

• Excellent presentation, written and verbal communication skills.

• Strong problem-solving skills to address technical challenges and make critical decisions regarding software architecture and development.

• Works to influence parties within and outside of the job function at an operational level regarding strategy and best practices.

• A deep understanding of software architecture principles, design patterns, and best practices is essential. Knowledge of various databases, cloud technologies, and software development methodologies is also required.

• Responsible for providing guidance, coaching, and training to other employees within the technical area.

• Individual meets department and personal goals with little direction/ supervision.

Preferred Qualifications:

• MBA or equivalent experience.

• Product experience in Education Technology, Fin Tech, and/or with a B2C SaaS platform.

• Experience in large enterprise platforms and integrations.

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 Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.