Senior Product Manager, Payment Systems and Fraud Prevention

Job Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end product strategy and roadmap for core workstreams within our platform, aligning stakeholders across engineering, design, operations, and executive leadership.
• Translate insights from colleges, universities, students, and payers into prioritized product requirements that balance institutional needs with scalable platform architecture.
• Lead discovery efforts including client interviews, advisory councils, and feedback loops to validate problems and pressure-test proposed solutions before build.
• Lead the charge to define strategic and novel applications of AI in our products.
• Define and track success metrics (adoption, retention, NPS) and use data to inform trade-offs and continuously improve outcomes post-launch.
• Partner with engineering leadership to break down complex modernization initiatives into incremental, shippable releases that minimize disruption to existing clients.
• Collaborate closely with compliance, security, and risk teams. Ensure all releases meet PCI Level 1 standards and applicable higher education regulatory requirements.
• Influence cross-functional roadmap decisions across integrated products (payment plans, cashiering, refunds, storefronts) to ensure a cohesive client and student experience.
• Represent the voice of the client in executive forums, providing clear recommendations supported by qualitative research and quantitative analysis.

Requirements

• Required: Bachelor's degree in Business, Computer Science, Finance, or a related field.
• PREFERRED: Advanced degree in a related discipline.
• Product management certifications.
• Experience Required: 3+ years of product management experience, including experience managing complex platform or SaaS products.
• Experience delivering AI-enabled software to market.
• Proven track record of shipping products in agile environments while partnering directly with engineering teams.
• Experience defining and using product metrics to drive prioritization and measure success.

Qualifications

• Experience in higher education technology, payments, fintech.
• Familiarity with compliance, payment processing workflows, or ERP integrations (Workday, Banner, PeopleSoft, Colleague).
• Demonstrated experience leading fraud detection and prevention initiatives.

Skills

• High agency: Taking ownership of outcomes beyond the formal scope of the role, removing blockers proactively, and driving decisions forward rather than waiting for direction.
• Design taste: Bringing a discerning eye for product quality, user experience, and craft. Pushing for elegant, intuitive solutions over feature accumulation and partnering effectively with design to elevate the standard of every release.
• Strong strategic thinking: Connecting product decisions to long-term business outcomes and anticipating market shifts in higher education and payments.
• Influence without authority: Building alignment across engineering, design, executive, and client-facing teams to move complex initiatives forward.
• Customer obsession: Demonstrating rigorous discovery practices and translating client feedback into clearly framed problems and solutions.
• Data fluency: Using quantitative analysis and qualitative research with equal confidence to make prioritization decisions and defend trade-offs.
• Agility in ambiguity: Operating effectively in evolving conditions, making clear decisions with incomplete information while managing risk.

Benefits

Nelnet offers a comprehensive benefits package including:

• Medical, dental, vision, HSA and FSA
• Generous earned time off
• 401K/student loan repayment
• Life insurance & AD&D insurance
• Employee assistance program
• Employee stock purchase program
• Tuition reimbursement
• Performance-based incentive pay
• Short- and long-term disability
• A robust wellness program

To learn more about our benefits, please click here: LINK.