Chief Product Officer

Student Basic Needs Coalition

. Own SBNC’s product vision and strategy, translating organizational goals, student needs, and campus-partner needs into a prioritized roadmap .

Posted 9/21/2026full-timeRemote • United StatesLead💰 $170,000 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in product vision and strategy, with a strong focus on AI-enabled features and student-centered design. Proven ability to lead and mentor technology teams while driving product development from concept to market in complex environments.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Product Vision and StrategyAI-Enabled Product FeaturesQualitative and Quantitative ResearchLeadership and Team BuildingHigher Education Experience

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard Skills

Product ManagementAI Feature DevelopmentResearch DesignData AnalysisRoadmap Prioritization

Soft Skills

ResourcefulnessGrowth MindsetCollaborationAdaptabilityUrgency

Industry Keywords

Higher EducationPublic-Sector TechnologyStudent EngagementComplex SystemsRegulatory Compliance

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Own SBNC’s product vision and strategy, translating organizational goals, student needs, and campus-partner needs into a prioritized roadmap
Align product investment with SBNC’s broader strategy, impact goals, communications, and fundraising priorities
Establish a repeatable process for identifying barriers to student action, prioritizing hypotheses, and selecting interventions to test
Build, hire, mentor, and grow a lean technology team
Define where AI belongs in SBNC’s product and evaluate AI-enabled features for efficacy, accuracy, reliability, bias, and safety
Design and run qualitative and quantitative research with students, campus partners, and staff
Diagnose why students drop off or struggle to complete key actions and prioritize barriers to address
Determine which problems, features, and capabilities campus partners value and may pay for
Design lightweight rapid experiments before committing significant engineering resources
Interpret research, product, and experiment results rigorously
Define success metrics and assess whether products and changes improve student behavior and outcomes
Identify and validate problems, define core products and AI-enabled capabilities, and bring them to market
Personally write specifications, review designs, unblock engineering, and make day-to-day product decisions
Prioritize and sequence roadmap work while balancing speed, quality, learning, impact, and limited engineering capacity
Report to the Executive Director and lead the Founding Engineer plus two planned additional engineers

Requirements

What you’ll need

Commitment to SBNC's mission to help postsecondary students connect to the resources they need to stay enrolled, complete their education, and build a foundation for economic mobility
Treats students as co-designers and prioritizes those facing the greatest barriers
Resourceful and brings a sense of urgency to removing friction between students and the benefits they qualify for while maintaining a high bar for quality and follow-through
Designs for scale and prioritizes what matters most for future campuses, policy shifts, and student barriers
Comfortable wearing multiple hats and owning outcomes; startup mentality
Growth and innovation mindset; seeks feedback, shares it openly, and adapts
Functional or executive-level leadership experience
7+ years of management experience while remaining willing and able to perform individual-contributor-level work
Track record of taking products from 0 to 1, ideally as an early or founding product leader at a startup or similarly entrepreneurial organization
Genuine product research experience, including designing, running, and synthesizing qualitative and quantitative research and experiments
Uses evidence to drive roadmap decisions
Direct experience shipping AI-enabled product features
Experience in higher education, government benefits, public-sector technology, or another highly regulated or administratively complex environment
Strong product judgment under resource constraints
Experience building products for populations navigating complex or high-stakes systems
Must reside within the 50 states or District of Columbia
Full authorization to work in the 50 U.S. states and District of Columbia
No employment visa sponsorship is offered

Benefits

Comp & perks

10% annual performance bonus
Medical insurance (100% Paid Employee Only Coverage, 50% for dependents)
Flexible PTO (after a 90-day introductory period)
12 weeks of Paid Parental Leave
11 federally recognized holidays
Paid Org-wide office closures: March (1 week); July (1 week); November (1 week); End of year (2 weeks)
Starter 401(k) retirement plan
Home office setup stipend
Fully remote work