Group Product Manager, Horizon

Nelnet•Remote - California, CA

6d•$100,000 - $150,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Nelnet Business Services (NBS), a division of Nelnet, Inc., provides payment technology, education services, and learning management solutions to education and faith-based organizations. Nelnet Campus Commerce (NCC) is building the future of higher education financial services through its next-generation Horizon platform. This role is a player-coach position, guiding a small team of Product Managers while personally owning a core area of the Horizon platform. The Group Product Manager will lead and grow a team, ensure alignment across departments, and drive impactful releases for institutions and students. Reporting into NCC’s senior product leadership, this role sets the standard for product management excellence on Horizon.

Requirements

6+ years of product management experience with a strong track record of shipping products yourself.
1+ years mentoring or directly managing other Product Managers.
Experience partnering with go-to-market teams to launch complex SaaS or platform products.
Track record of personally shipping AI-enabled or data-driven software products with measurable business impact.
Proven ability to align and influence stakeholders across engineering, design, and commercial functions.
Bachelor’s degree in Business, Computer Science, Finance, or a related field.
Player-coach mindset: energized by doing the work and developing others.
Vision that rallies teams: articulate a compelling direction and make others want to build it.
High agency: take ownership of outcomes, remove blockers proactively, and drive decisions forward.
Builder’s instinct: understand how great products are made and have the judgment to make hard prioritization calls.
GTM fluency: understand how products get to market and partner with commercial teams on launches.
People leadership: invest in team’s growth, create psychological safety alongside high expectations.
Clear communication: communicate with clarity and conviction, translating product complexity into crisp narratives.
Customer obsession: maintain a rigorous connection to institutions, administrators, and students.
Agility in ambiguity: thrive in a high-stakes, evolving environment, making sound decisions under uncertainty.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree with emphasis on strategy, technology, or leadership.
Experience in higher education technology, fintech, payments, or B2B2C platform businesses.
Experience contributing to or leading platform modernization, replatforming, or migration work.
Familiarity with PCI Level 1 compliance, payment processing workflows, or ERP integrations (Workday, Banner, PeopleSoft, Colleague).

Responsibilities

Personally own a core area of the Horizon platform end to end—running discovery, writing requirements, making prioritization calls, and partnering daily with engineering and design to ship.
Stay close to the details: dig into the data, prototype and pressure-test ideas, review designs, and validate solutions with real users.
Set the bar for product craft by example, modeling the discovery, writing, and decision-making expected from the PMs led.
Lead, mentor, and grow a small team of Product Managers responsible for Horizon workstreams, setting clear expectations and helping each PM sharpen their craft.
Foster a high-agency, outcome-oriented culture where PMs operate with confidence in ambiguity and hold themselves accountable to measurable business results.
Balance hands-on coaching with real autonomy—giving PMs ownership of their areas while stepping in directly when a problem needs attention.
Own the strategy and roadmap for the group’s areas of Horizon, translating NCC’s broader product vision into a sequenced plan.
Identify and build practical applications of AI across areas of the platform.
Keep a close eye on the higher education payments landscape, competitive moves, and emerging regulatory requirements, and fold learnings back into the roadmap.
Partner with sales, marketing, implementation, and client success to plan and execute Horizon launches.
Work closely with engineering on architecture and delivery cadence, managing trade-offs transparently.
Define success metrics for areas of the platform—spanning adoption, retention, payment completion, and institutional satisfaction—and hold the team accountable to outcomes.
Collaborate with compliance, security, and risk teams to ensure releases meet PCI Level 1 standards and applicable higher education regulatory requirements.