Senior Product Manager - Academic Ops

About the Role We’re looking for a Senior Product Manager – Academic Operations to lead the strategy, vision, and execution of Kuali’s academic operations product suite.  As Sr. Product Manager, you’ll define and deliver solutions that streamline curriculum management, catalog, scheduling, degree audit, and advising workflows for higher education institutions.   You’ll collaborate cross-functionally with design, engineering, and customer success teams to ensure our products empower universities to operate efficiently and deliver exceptional student experiences.     Who are we?  Kuali builds software solutions for higher education. We help our customers — colleges & universities — focus on providing a fantastic education to students by decreasing their administrative costs. We work in a competitive space, ripe for innovation, with users ready to be delighted. Our Culture As a company, we are guided by our cultural values: [https://www.kuali.co/jobs#values] * Iterate to evolve * Cultivate openness * Act with accountability * Assume the best * Practice humility * Deliver amazing experiences At Kuali, we learn from and teach each other, we practice transparency and empathy, we delight in delivering value to our customers, and we WIN!   We work remotely and have for years. Distributed work is in our bones, with a history of institutions working across state lines on open-source software for more than ten years. Our employees each work in the environment where they’re happiest, from Pennsylvania to Seattle. We work consciously to create a collaborative and healthy remote work culture, and we travel to meet in person a few times each year.  Everyone should love their work. At Kuali, we embrace diversity and inclusion at every level. We value and respect individuals from all backgrounds, recognizing that a rich tapestry of experiences and perspectives fuels our success as a company and enriches our collective human experience. What you’ll be responsible for * Own the product backlog for Kuali Research, ensuring clarity, prioritization, and alignment with strategic goals. * Translate customer feedback, institutional requirements, and product vision into actionable user stories and acceptance criteria. * Collaborate daily with engineering and design teams to ensure timely, high‑quality delivery. * Partner with Product Managers to refine roadmap priorities and validate outcomes against customer needs. * Support release planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives to drive continuous improvement. * Serve as the voice of the customer within the scrum team, ensuring solutions meet real‑world research administration challenges. * Monitor product performance and collaborate on data‑driven decisions to enhance usability and adoption.   About you We’re looking for curious, enthusiastic, empathetic people to solve problems, execute on ideas, advocate for the customer, and contribute to a team culture built on trust and mutual respect.  We build and support systems using both Java and Node.js/React. We believe that great developers can always learn new tools. Above any specific tech stack, we’re looking for versatile developers — those who know when to think big and when to act small, and who are comfortable in both greenfield and refactoring projects. We believe the best results are created by teams who represent a broad range of ideas and perspectives. We value employees with diverse backgrounds and experiences.   Ideal candidates have experience with: * Define and execute the product strategy and roadmap for Kuali’s Academic Operations portfolio, aligning investments with company strategy and measurable customer and business outcomes. * Own and communicate a compelling strategic narrative for Academic Operations, including its vision, value proposition, competitive differentiation, and intended customer outcomes. * Develop a deep understanding of the higher education market, institutional needs, customer segments, competitive landscape, and relevant regulatory trends. * Partner closely with customers and internal stakeholders to identify and validate opportunities that improve institutional efficiency, user experience, and student success. * Translate market insights, product data, customer feedback, and user research into clearly defined problems, desired outcomes, hypotheses, requirements, and roadmap priorities. * Build evidence-based business cases for product investments, considering customer value, market potential, revenue impact, cost, risk, and resource requirements. * Establish clear prioritization frameworks and make informed tradeoffs among customer needs, business objectives, technical considerations, and available capacity. * Partner with Engineering and Design throughout discovery and delivery to evaluate feasibility, manage scope and dependencies, and deliver accessible, scalable, and high-quality solutions. * Lead cross-functional teams through product discovery, validation, prioritization, development, launch, adoption, and continuous improvement. * Partner with Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Services, and Implementation to develop positioning, support go-to-market execution, enable customer-facing teams, and drive product adoption. * Contribute to packaging, pricing, and commercialization decisions that strengthen the portfolio’s market position and business performance. * Define product KPIs and use quantitative and qualitative insights to measure adoption, customer satisfaction, retention, operational performance, and customer and business outcomes. * Monitor product performance following launch and use the results to continuously improve the product and inform future investment decisions. * Identify and manage product risks and dependencies, including data privacy, security, accessibility, compliance, integration, scalability, and responsible AI use. * Communicate product strategy, priorities, decisions, progress, performance, and risks clearly to executive leaders, customers, and cross-functional stakeholders. * Use AI to improve the quality, speed, and throughput of product work while championing its responsible and effective use throughout the product development process. * Contribute to the continued development of Kuali’s product management practices, tools, and standards, including its AI-powered product operating system. We’d be delighted if you bring experience with: * 7+ years of product management experience, including 3+ years in SaaS or enterprise software with proven ability to achieve business outcomes * Deep understanding of the higher education market * Proven success in defining and launching impactful products in complex domains, and managing a multi-module portfolio. * Strong analytical, communication, and stakeholder management skills. * Experience working in agile environments and leading cross-functional teams. * Passion for improving education through technology. Preferred Qualifications * Experience with academic ERP or SIS integrations. * Familiarity with data-driven decision-making and product analytics tools. * Background in Higher Education Academic Operations i * A collaborative, curious, and mission-driven mindset. Perks * Remote-first work * Top-of-the-line equipment of your choice to get your job done * A truly exceptional benefits package including full premium coverage for employee and dependent medical and dental care * 401(k) matching * Employee stock option plan * Paid Maternity/Parental leave * All the paid time off you need (just work it out with your manager) * Encouragement and support in learning and improving your skill-sets. * Space to work on self-driven projects during quarterly “hack weeks” * Employee resource groups and community events