Principal Product Manager

Commercial Bank of California•United State, US,

2d•$165,000 - $175,000•Remote

About The Position

The Principal Product Manager is a senior product leader responsible for translating enterprise strategy, customer and partner needs, regulatory obligations, security priorities, and operational requirements into measurable product outcomes and executable roadmaps across VCI payment platforms. The role reports directly to Executive Management and independently leads assigned product domains while partnering closely with the Director of Product Management and leaders across Technology, Operations, Risk, Compliance, Information Security, Finance, Sales, and Customer Support. The position expands Product capacity and strengthens leadership continuity. It reduces single-person dependency by establishing transferable product knowledge, documented decision authority, disciplined governance, secondary coverage, and durable operating practices. The role must be capable of maintaining essential Product operations within defined authority during a planned or unplanned leadership absence or transition. This is initially a senior individual-contributor role and may exercise functional leadership without direct people-management responsibility. The role leads product responsibilities across VCI’s Legacy, ACHWorks, and Veer platforms, balancing operating needs and modernization priorities while coordinating with delivery partners and accountable control functions.

Requirements

8+ years of progressive experience in Product Management, payment platforms, financial technology, or related product leadership, including ownership of complex regulated products from discovery through production operation.
Deep knowledge of ACH processing, transaction lifecycles, returns, exceptions, settlement, reconciliation, controls, operational workflows, and partner integrations.
Demonstrated ability to lead substantial product domains independently, represent Product with executives, resolve cross-functional conflicts, and maintain continuity in a complex operating environment.
Experience developing product strategy, roadmaps, business cases, requirements, process models, user stories, acceptance criteria, KPIs, and evidence-based prioritization decisions.
Ability to understand API documentation, REST APIs, webhooks, event-driven integrations, data models, service dependencies, logs, and distributed-system failure scenarios sufficiently to make sound product decisions; hands-on software development is not required.
Experience with Jira, Confluence, or comparable product, requirements, and knowledge-management platforms, and Agile or Scrum delivery practices.
Experience leading internal and distributed delivery partners within formal SDLC, change-management, audit, security, and regulatory-control environments.
Exceptional executive communication, facilitation, documentation, analytical, decision-making, and influencing skills.

Nice To Haves

NACHA Accredited ACH Professional certification.
Leadership experience across multiple payment or banking platforms, including modernization, migration, product rationalization, or vendor transition.
Experience with payments risk, fraud, underwriting, billing, reconciliation, reporting, merchant onboarding, processors, sponsor banks, or ISVs.
Familiarity with SOC examinations, IT general controls, vulnerability-remediation governance, and audit evidence.

Responsibilities

Independently lead assigned payment platforms, product domains, strategic initiatives, and operating responsibilities within approved enterprise priorities and delegated authority.
Partner with the Director of Product Management to divide portfolio ownership, clarify decision rights, balance workload, and maintain coordinated product strategy.
Represent Product in executive and cross-functional forums, communicating portfolio status, decisions, tradeoffs, dependencies, risks, outcomes, and escalations.
Maintain succession-ready operating playbooks, decision logs, stakeholder maps, ownership matrices, delegated-authority records, cross-training plans, and secondary coverage.
Provide functional leadership, coaching, and standards for Product Managers and Business Analysts.
Develop product vision, multi-quarter roadmaps, measurable objectives, and investment recommendations for assigned platforms, integrations, workflows, and customer-facing capabilities.
Research customer, partner, market, operational, and support needs using interviews, workflow observation, data, sales feedback, service trends, and competitive analysis.
Define target users, use cases, value propositions, adoption objectives, service impacts, and measurable business outcomes for major investments.
Partner with Sales, Marketing, Finance, Operations, and Customer Support on business cases, pricing and packaging input, launch readiness, customer communication, adoption, and post-launch performance.
Use product, operational, financial, risk, and customer measures to recommend investment, remediation, rationalization, migration, or retirement.
Prioritize demand using business value, customer impact, regulatory and security urgency, operational and technical risk, dependencies, capacity, and effort; document approvals, deferrals, assumptions, and tradeoffs.
Recommend Product capacity allocation across strategic initiatives, customer commitments, regulatory obligations, security remediation, operational support, technical debt, and modernization.
Partner with Technology leadership to align product demand with engineering capacity, architecture dependencies, vendor constraints, delivery risk, and release sequencing.
Identify capability, staffing, vendor, knowledge-transfer, and succession needs and present recommendations to Executive Management.
Lead requirements intake, discovery, analysis, review, approval, traceability, and change control, including business requirements, process flows, user stories, nonfunctional requirements, and acceptance criteria.
Ensure delivery commitments have defined business outcomes, users, impacted workflows, data, controls, dependencies, security considerations, and measurable acceptance criteria.
Maintain current product decision records, business rules, system behavior, dependencies, workflow documentation, roadmap assumptions, release history, known constraints, and primary and secondary ownership.
Lead Product traceability from approved business need through requirements, implementation, testing, release, production validation, and outcome measurement in coordination with accountable functions.
Establish documentation standards, review cadences, ownership, and aging controls to keep product knowledge accessible, current, auditable, and transferable.
Lead an ordered, groomed, traceable, delivery-ready backlog for assigned domains and ensure work meets readiness standards before sprint or release commitment.
Convert approved priorities into sequenced backlogs, release objectives, milestones, requirements, and acceptance criteria; surface aging decisions, unresolved dependencies, and stalled work.
Facilitate scope and change control, clarify requirements, assess deliverables against acceptance criteria, and coordinate Product decisions with internal, offshore, nearshore, and third-party delivery partners.
Define product and business release criteria, coordinate readiness, and confirm post-release business behavior and outcomes without replacing independent approval functions.
Use delivery and outcome measures to identify causes of delay, rework, ambiguity, dependency failure, or missed value and recommend corrective action.
Lead product responsibilities across VCI’s Legacy, ACHWorks, and Veer platforms, with clearly defined ownership, integration dependencies, and migration objectives.
Lead requirements across ACH transaction lifecycles, clearing, settlement, returns, exceptions, reconciliation, reporting, merchant onboarding, partner integrations, and related workflows.
Translate approved NACHA, regulatory, risk, compliance, and sponsor-bank interpretations into product requirements and acceptance criteria; support processor, sponsor-bank, ISV, and integration discussions.
Partner with Architecture and Technology on modernization plans that improve transparency and observability, reduce key-person and vendor dependency, and define sequencing, readiness, rollback, and retirement criteria.
Incorporate approved critical and high-risk security remediation, regulatory obligations, and risk-treatment priorities into product planning in accordance with established requirements.
Ensure remediation work has documented ownership, priority, dependencies, target disposition, and escalation when conflicts arise.
Maintain audit-ready Product records and coordinate supporting approval, testing, exception, and post-release evidence from applicable control owners.
Define business and customer impact, workarounds, and Product remediation priority; coordinate issue triage and corrective actions with accountable functions.
Approve Product requirements, acceptance criteria, backlog sequencing, Product readiness, and routine portfolio decisions within assigned domains and delegated limits.
Lead prioritization and recommend investment, deferral, remediation, migration, resource-allocation, vendor, and platform-rationalization actions.
Escalate material regulatory interpretations, contractual commitments, budget decisions, architecture or security exceptions, production change approvals, and enterprise-risk acceptance to designated accountable owners or Executive Management.
During an authorized leadership absence or transition, assume broader day-to-day Product leadership within documented delegation limits.

Benefits

Competitive employer contribution to medical, dental, and vision coverage.
401k plan with employer match.
Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) and Dependent Care Accounts.
Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
Employer-provided Calm subscription.
Employer-provided mental health benefits through Teladoc.
Life, AD&D, and disability insurance.
Minimum 10 days of vacation, 6 paid federal holidays, and 5 paid personal days per year.
Online discount program.
Tuition Reimbursement Program.