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.

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

The Senior Software Product Manager, Data Catalog and Governance position at WGU is an individual contributor role for experienced product individuals who are passionate about delighting users while delivering value to the business. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams and product peers to develop strategic product roadmaps, manage initiative rollouts, and oversee operations. 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 implementation choices driving delivery of optimized value to the organization. We look for candidates who can demonstrate a history of delivering outcomes through a partnership with design, engineering 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.

Job Description

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Works closely with cross functional team of stakeholders, end-users, engineers, and product leaders to understand the problems to solve, inform the product vision and define requirements
• Produces a comprehensive and cohesive vision, strategy, and roadmap for the Enterprise Data Catalog and Data Governance initiative
• Leads change management efforts necessary to drive the success of the Data Governance initiative as a whole, and related projects including Data Issue Management and Data Life Cycle Management
• Works towards creating shared outcomes with multiple teams to deliver impact, particularly in the context of fulfilling the mission of the Data Catalog and Data Governance
• Defines product release and implementation strategies, ensuring the readiness of the various business partners, including Data Catalog features, meta-model, and content
• Becomes the expert for the Data Catalog, demonstrating mastery of the current platform with an understanding of gaps that inform their near-term product roadmap and implementation plan, 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 Data Stewards and Data Consumers
• Performs other related duties as assigned.

Serves as Data Catalog System Administrator and primary system configurator:

• Manages operating model
• Produces dashboards, workflows, and views
• Administrates user management
• Produces analytics and reports
• Supervises data schema ingestion, and data lineage

Serves as Enterprise Data Steward:

• Identifying, prioritizing, and executing metadata creation and maintenance
• Recruiting, training, and supervising Domain Data Stewards

Serves as Data Catalog Adoption Manager:

• Planning and executing campaigns to drive adoption
• Providing robust communications move initiatives forward

Knowledge, Skill and Abilities:

• Understands data, data structures, and data modeling, and can synthesize needs of data consumers into strategic product requirements
• Understands data exploration and visualization
• Excels in abstract and logical thinking
• Understands the landscape of problems and quickly zeros in on the best strategy to achieve business outcomes

• Excellent Storyteller
• Makes choices about priorities that clearly demonstrate an understanding of the business goals, market demand and user needs
• Can effectively cope with change and can shift gears comfortably

Competencies:

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.

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.

Job Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications:

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

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in technical field
• Experience with data exploration and visualization
• Experience with data modeling
• Experience with data governance
• Experience leading change management
• Experience with data transformations and integration
• Experience with (data and/or AI) compliance regulations
• Experience working in Agile environments

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.