Principal Software Product Manager

Job Description

The Principal Software Product Manager is the most senior individual contributor role within the Product organization. They collaborate with cross‑functional teams and product peers to develop strategic product roadmaps that ensure a holistic end‑to‑end user experience. The role involves building business cases, articulating strategy, evangelizing the product vision, measuring initiative efficacy, and making high‑stakes trade‑offs between features to meet both business goals and user needs.

Job Duties

• Owns the most difficult products/strategies that span multiple product domains, requiring high levels of coordination and collaboration.
• Works directly with senior and executive leaders to understand pressing problems and develop effective strategies.
• 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 stakeholders, end‑users, engineers, UX designers, and product leaders to understand problems, inform product vision, and define requirements.
• Leads senior‑level cross‑functional collaboration to deliver outcomes and serves as the go‑to person for product‑related questions and guidance.
• Designs experiments to test customer trade‑offs among user experience, technology constraints, and business value.
• Analyzes the impact of product‑domain features on key business outcomes.
• Connects domain data to the experience journey and aligns with user and business OKRs/KPIs.
• Leads efforts to create shared outcomes across multiple teams to deliver customer impact.
• Defines product release strategies, ensuring readiness of various business partners.
• Becomes the expert for their product, mastering the current platform and identifying gaps that inform near‑term roadmaps and long‑term strategy.
• Manages expectations by identifying at‑risk initiatives 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, monitors them, and pivots when data suggests a need.
• Ensures product quality by testing software features against acceptance criteria and coordinating user acceptance testing.
• Mentors and guides less‑experienced Product Managers through formalized mentorship assignments.
• Leads research efforts to clarify ambiguity and develops data collection strategies to identify outcomes for measuring success.
• Uses data storytelling to influence decisions about delivering the right outcomes at the right time.
• Performs other job‑related duties as assigned.

Key Skills and Abilities

• Product evangelist internally and externally.
• Ability to reimagine a product space and bring it to life.
• Understanding and guiding monetization of product opportunities.
• Evaluating trade‑off decisions to deliver greatest customer value at the right time.
• Future‑oriented visioning and credible storytelling of possibilities.
• Coordinating and aligning with other product teams across the organization.
• Inspiring new ways of working and product practices.
• Sharing insights and best practices across teams and externally.
• Leading and influencing managers and staff without direct reports.
• Excellent presentation, written, and verbal communication skills for executive audiences.
• Strong passion for exploring and understanding customer needs.
• Natural leadership instincts with a positive team‑building approach.
• Broad and deep product discovery techniques and knowing when to apply each.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in a related field.
• 10 years of demonstrated experience as a Software Product Manager, Product Owner, or Group Product Manager, with at least 3 years in a Senior or Group Product Manager role.
• Professional Product Certification (e.g., Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Pragmatic Marketing).
• Experience working in Agile environments.
• Experience managing multiple problem types simultaneously.
• Equivalent relevant experience may substitute for education requirements (1 year of experience equals 1 year of education, at hiring manager’s discretion).

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s Degree in a related field.
• Experience in Education Technology.
• Certification in Change Management.

Travel

Occasional travel of up to 20% is required, including attendance at designated company summits (typically one to two per year). Additional travel may include conferences, visits to company locations, and other business‑related events as needed.

Compensation

Grade: Technical 412
Pay Range: $180,300.00 – $279,500.00

Benefits

• Eligibility for bonuses.
• Medical, dental, vision, telehealth, and mental healthcare coverage.
• Health Savings Account (HSA) and Flexible Spending Account (FSA).
• 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.
• Flexible paid time off (no accrual) and flexible paid sick time (no accrual).
• 11 paid holidays and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.