Product Manager, Workday Student

Workday•Pleasanton, CA

7d•$117,800 - $210,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Workday is seeking a Product Manager for their Workday Student Financial Aid team. This role involves interpreting complex federal regulations and translating them into automated processes for financial aid packaging, awarding, and disbursement for higher education institutions and their students. The team operates at the intersection of policy and technology, ensuring compliance and a seamless student experience. The upcoming year will focus on navigating regulatory changes, building new solutions, and researching AI-powered features to potentially reshape higher education. The team is collaborative, supportive, and mission-driven, seeking individuals energized by meaningful work that impacts student access to education. The Product Manager will drive product development by guiding the roadmap, collaborating with customers and scrum teams, and serving as the voice of the customer and student. This includes shaping new features, enhancements, AI solutions, and post-production support. The role involves partnering with Workday experts to utilize AI tools for setting priorities, developing roadmaps, defining sprint plans, and creating requirements documentation for both internal and external audiences.

Requirements

5+ years experience in product management, defining and delivering SaaS and/or cloud-based enterprise software products or features.
Bachelor’s degree in a relevant discipline such as Business, Computer Science, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
Experience managing at least one product through a full Product Life Cycle (PLC) — from initial concept and requirements gathering to launch and post-launch optimization
3+ years experience researching and prioritizing business requirements.
Customer Advocacy — You are dedicated to representing customer interests and building products that deliver maximum value. You develop strategies to improve the customer experience and build relationships with customers to gain their trust and loyalty.
Business Influence — You can shape decisions and opinions within product teams and with partners, using persuasive communication and well-developed relationships to drive alignment on priorities and direction by presenting data, building consensus, working with the team on compromises, and articulating a strategic vision.
Decision Making — You can anticipate problems, resolve ambiguity, and take decisive action. You are comfortable evaluating multiple options and selecting the best course of action, even with incomplete information.
Cross-Team Collaboration — You are flexible, reliable, and collaborative. You work effectively with others, contributing to a culture of inclusivity and mutual respect. You effectively lead and work with Engineering, Design, Support, Documentation teams, and Marketing to define and deliver product features.
Accountable Owner - You operate independently and can be trusted to follow through on commitments.
Customer Advocate - You deeply understand and articulate customer needs in product strategy and decisions through user research, feedback analysis, or customer engagement.
Customer Empathy - You proactively seek and understand customer pain points to drive product development and improve user experience by meeting with outbound facing stakeholders and customers.
Data Analysis - You demonstrate solid data analysis skills by using adoptions metric tools to derive actionable insights for product strategy, prioritization, and measuring success.

Nice To Haves

Knowledge of Student Information System products or the higher education industry is preferred. You stay current with developments in the field and apply that understanding to inform product decisions.
Stakeholder Management — You have experience working with clients and participating in customer-facing projects. You can identify key partners, understand their needs, and develop effective communication strategies to keep everyone aligned.

Responsibilities

Define the product vision, strategy and roadmap, including the underlying technical capabilities.
Interpreting complex and evolving federal financial aid regulations and translating them into clear, actionable product requirements
Driving the product roadmap for the component areas you own and collaborating with scrum teams to deliver high-quality releases on schedule
Serving as the primary advocate for customers and students, gathering feedback and representing their needs throughout the product development lifecycle
Researching and designing AI-driven features that improve automation, efficiency, and the overall student and administrator experience
Collaborating with cross-functional teams across Workday, including other product managers, architects, engineering, and customer-facing teams, to ensure alignment and successful delivery
Collaborating with external stakeholders including customers, partners and the U.S. Department of Education to understand their desired business outcomes and priorities
Creating and maintaining detailed requirements documentation, sprint plans, Jira projects, and multi-year roadmaps using AI tools
Drive solution design for each release based on user requirements, technical architecture, and business outcomes.
Guide the product teams towards high value OKRs.
Support education and adoption of platform features by internal development teams.
Communicate and evangelize the product area among the Workday community and at Workday events.
Lead technical discussions with key internal and external stakeholders / customers.