Principle Product Manager

Kinective • Gilbert, AZ

9d • $120,000 - $140,000 • Remote

About The Position

Kinective is seeking a Principal Product Manager of FI Solutions & Platform Strategy to bridge the gap between financial institutions and the product teams building for them. This role is crucial for ensuring Kinective's products are grounded in the reality of how financial institutions operate. The ideal candidate will possess deep credibility and operational fluency within the FI world to inform and sharpen product and platform decisions. This position sits at the intersection of client reality and product strategy, validating what Kinective builds, strengthening its positioning, and providing essential FI insight to the product organization. The role requires a strong understanding of the challenges facing community FIs, including data fragmentation, AI adoption, consolidation, fraud, and lean operations. Success will be measured by FI validation coverage, client advisory program engagement, platform coherence, internal enablement, and go-to-market alignment. This is a senior individual contributor role focused on insight, credibility, and influence, not people management or ownership of a single product vertical.

Requirements

• Deep FI credibility
• Profile A: VP-level or equivalent experience at a community bank, credit union, or regional financial institution — you have been in the room where decisions get made
• Profile A: Broad exposure across FI functions: operations, technology, lending, retail banking, fraud, or compliance — with hands-on experience managing core migrations, middleware implementations, or origination system overhauls
• Profile A: Deep familiarity with the challenges facing community FIs today: data fragmentation, AI adoption pressure, consolidation dynamics, fraud escalation, and doing more with leaner teams
• Profile A: Existing relationships within the community FI ecosystem — with peers, vendors, or industry associations — that give you immediate credibility and access
• Profile B: 5+ years in software product management, specifically managing complex platform ecosystems, integrations, or API-driven products in fintech or enterprise SaaS
• Profile B: Proven experience working across fragmented product lines to create platform coherence — ideally where connectivity or data was the core value proposition
• Non-negotiable: direct, hands-on experience working with community FI clients. You have sat across from FI executives and earned their trust as a peer — not as a vendor pitching features
• You understand the difference between how FIs are sold to and how they actually make decisions internally
• Systems thinking: you can see how a change in one module ripples across an entire FI’s operation — and across Kinective’s platform
• Technical fluency: comfortable discussing APIs, data schemas, and integration architecture with engineers while translating the same decisions into business impact for the C-suite
• Influence without authority: you have navigated complex organizations to drive alignment across competing priorities
• Communication clarity: you translate complex FI operations into crisp product direction, and complex product capabilities into outcomes FI executives care about
• Comfort with ambiguity: this is a senior IC role where credibility, relationships, and judgment are the asset. You will help define what success looks like — not wait for someone to hand it to you

Nice To Haves

• No product management experience required for Profile A. We will teach you how we work. You teach us how FIs work.
• Platform PM credentials alone are not sufficient for Profile B.

Responsibilities

• Act as primary source of ground-truth FI insight — ensuring what we build is grounded in how financial institutions actually operate.
• Play a major, ongoing role in Kinective’s client advisory programs — including the Customer Advisory Board (CAB), executive committee sessions, and client working groups — in close partnership with the Director of Product Marketing who leads these programs
• Validate major solution initiatives against real FI feedback before launch, ensuring the roadmap reflects what community banks and credit unions actually need
• Translate client conversations into clear, actionable insights the product team can act on — and flag gaps between what we’re building and what FIs will actually adopt
• Build and maintain direct relationships with FI executives, operations leaders, and technology teams to give Kinective ongoing access to operational ground truth
• Equip the SVPs of Product Strategy and Product Marketing with the FI insight and context they need to make roadmap, positioning, and go-to-market decisions
• Contribute to Kinective’s cross-product platform strategy by bringing a client-grounded perspective to how our solutions connect and deliver value together
• Contribute to the cross-product roadmap by surfacing integration friction, workflow gaps, and multi-product opportunities identified through direct FI engagement
• Map end-to-end FI workflows — from digital onboarding to core ledger posting to fraud decisioning — and identify where module handoffs break down for clients
• Serve as connective tissue between product teams, engineering, and professional services to help prioritize integration improvements that benefit the full platform
• Pressure-test product and roadmap decisions against real FI operations: how institutions are staffed, how decisions get made, what regulatory compliance looks like in practice
• Ensure our AI investments are grounded in how FIs can actually adopt and benefit from them
• Partner with Product Strategy leadership to validate Kinective’s AI-powered solution bundles against real FI workflows, constraints, and adoption readiness
• Help FI clients articulate the value of AI-first banking in terms they can present to their own boards — and feed those conversations back as product insight
• Identify where AI adoption pressure, data fragmentation, and lean FI teams create the highest-value opportunities for Kinective’s platform to differentiate
• Surface market intelligence on AI adoption trends, regulatory signals, and fintech disruption to inform the product roadmap
• Bridge client reality and internal execution — helping product, marketing, and sales speak credibly to FI buyers
• Partner with Product Marketing to ensure value propositions and messaging are framed around outcomes that FI executives recognize and care about
• Review sales and marketing materials to ensure they reflect how FIs actually think about their problems — and flag when positioning misses the mark
• Serve as a subject matter resource for sales on complex FI deals, helping navigate procurement dynamics and stakeholder structures
• Align product, engineering, professional services, and GTM teams around client-validated priorities — without direct authority over any of them

Benefits

• Comprehensive health coverage (medical, dental, vision, prescriptions, life & disability)
• Flexible PTO, 11 company holidays, and generous parental and caregiver leave
• An immediately vested 401(k) with company contributions
• Wellness resources and professional development opportunities

What This Job Offers

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