Lead Product Manager

Bankrate

17h • $145,000 - $260,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

As a Lead Product Manager, you will own the strategy, roadmap, and outcomes for a cross-functional team focused on transforming our market-leading mortgage marketplace into a centralized hub for the entire home financing journey. Your primary objective will be to deepen our value proposition to users while scaling our partnerships with lenders by delivering higher-qualified leads driven by deeply validated data. This represents a meaningful expansion of how Bankrate serves consumers and financial institutions at the moments that matter most.
This role leads end-to-end product strategy in a high-speed, high-impact role operating in a start-up type environment where speed to learning is key. You will serve as the core product and technical leader for a cross-functional squad of engineers and designers. While this role begins as an individual contributor, there is strong potential to transition into direct people management as the team and product surface expand. You will set a 12–24 month product vision that drives impactful financial outcomes for consumers—enabling them to analyze home affordability, secure pre-approvals, submit applications, and compare real loan estimates in one seamless interface.

Requirements

• Proven experience building engaging, creative consumer experiences — ideally involving complex flows, financial tooling, or end-to-end application funnels.
• Experience taking a marketplace product from a traditional lead-generation model into a deeper, data-validated transactional platform.
• Demonstrated ability to manage complex, parallel workstreams and act as a strong cross-functional influencer without losing strategic clarity or execution discipline; readiness or prior experience to eventually mentor or manage direct reports is a plus.
• Ability to work with APIs, underwriting engines, and other mortgage technologies to ensure seamless, secure data flow between consumers and lending partners.
• Experience owning complex, interconnected data platforms and integration layers rather than isolated front-end features.
• Track record of driving measurable outcomes, particularly in conversion optimization, lead quality metrics, and revenue-impacting data products.
• Comfort navigating compliance and ambiguity while maintaining forward momentum.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in financial services or fintech, with a deep understanding of the mortgage lifecycle is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

• Own the Centralized Platform: Define the end-to-end product vision for a comprehensive digital mortgage experience that guides users step-by-step through the financing process to buy a home.
• Build Advanced Consumer Financing Tools: Lead the design and execution of native capabilities that deliver accurate home affordability analyses, streamlined pre-approval workflows, and side-by-side comparisons of real loan estimates.
• Partner with Third Party Vendors: Lead vendor partnerships that assist in developing high-fidelity data capture and verification tools that transform standard marketplace inquiries into highly qualified, transaction-ready leads, maximizing downstream conversion for our financial institution partners.
• Simplify the Application Lifecycle: Build seamless digital pathways that assist users in securely submitting mortgage applications directly to lenders, shifting user behavior from casual browsing to active transacting.
• Strategic Tradeoffs: Balance the needs of both key personas — the consumer (seeking transparency, speed, and real loan options) and the lender (seeking verified, high-intent, and compliant borrower data) — making deliberate prioritization decisions when they compete.
• Squad Leadership: Partner closely with Engineering and Design leads to ensure strong execution health, technical quality, and appropriate sequencing of foundational data infrastructure vs. consumer-facing features.
• Operational Excellence: Establish clear operating rhythms, decision frameworks, and success metrics that enable consistent delivery and learning across the transactional ecosystem.
• Data-Driven Iteration: Use quantitative and qualitative insights to validate strategy, guide prioritization, and iterate on the roadmap across both B2C (affordability and application flows) and B2B (lender integration and data delivery) dimensions

Benefits

• Health Insurance Coverage (medical, dental, and vision)
• Life Insurance
• Short and Long-Term Disability Insurance
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Holiday Pay
• 401(k) with match
• Employee Assistance Program
• Paid Parental Bonding Benefit Program
• Flexible Paid Time Off (PTO): We believe time to rest and recharge is essential. That’s why we offer a generous and flexible PTO policy. Full-time employees accrue 20 days of PTO for a full calendar year annually, with an increase to 25 days after five years of service.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed