Senior Product Manager | SaaS Growth & Innovation | Reston, VA

Ellucian • Full-time • Hybrid in Reston, Virginia, United States • $120,000 - $180,000 / year • 3w ago

Fast Facts

Ellucian is looking for a Senior Product Manager focused on SaaS growth and innovation in higher education, responsible for driving product strategies that enhance student success.

Responsibilities: Lead product vision and strategy, manage the end-to-end product lifecycle, and drive AI innovations while ensuring collaboration across various teams.

Skills: Expertise in product management in SaaS or edtech, strong communication, AI fluency, and a data-driven approach.

Qualifications: 8+ years of product management experience with proven success in managing full product lifecycles and boosting business performance in SaaS.

Location: Hybrid in Reston, Virginia, United States

Compensation: $120000 - $180000 / Annually

Fast Facts

Ellucian is seeking a Senior Product Manager with a focus on SaaS growth and innovation in higher education, responsible for leading key product strategies and driving student success outcomes.

Responsibilities: The role involves defining product vision, end-to-end business ownership, leading product lifecycle management, and driving AI-driven product innovations, while ensuring successful cross-functional collaboration and alignment.

Skills: Candidates must have strong product management experience in SaaS or edtech, strategic acumen, AI fluency, excellent communication skills, and a data-driven mindset.

Qualifications: 8+ years in product management with a proven record in managing full product lifecycles and driving business performance in SaaS environments.

Location: Reston, Virginia, United States

Compensation: Not provided by employer. Typical compensation ranges for this position are between $120,000 - $180,000.

About Ellucian

Ellucian is a global market leader in education technology. We power innovation for higher education, partnering with more than 2,800 customers across 50 countries and serving over 20 million students. Ellucian's AI-powered platform, trained on the richest dataset available in higher education, drives efficiency, personalized experiences, and strengthened engagement for all students, faculty and staff.

Fueled by decades of experience with a singular focus on the unique needs of learning institutions, the Ellucian platform features best-in-class SaaS capabilities and delivers insights needed now and into the future. These solutions and services span the entire student lifecycle, from student recruitment, enrollment, and retention to workforce analytics, fundraising, and alumni engagement.

Ellucian's innovative solutions, vast ecosystem of partners, and user community of more than 45,000 provide best practices leading to greater institutional success and achieving better student outcomes.

About the Opportunity

As part of Ellucian’s Student Success product portfolio, this role is responsible for leading multiple of Ellucian’s most strategic, high-growth products that support institutions in improving student outcomes and operational effectiveness.

The Senior Product Manager II will operate as the end-to-end business owner for their product area, accountable not only for product strategy and roadmap execution, but also for driving adoption, revenue growth, scalability, and long-term market success. This role requires a strong product leader who thrives in ambiguity, builds from discovery through enterprise scale, and partners cross-functionally to deliver measurable business impact.

This is a highly visible individual contributor role that requires strategic thinking, strong execution discipline, commercial acumen, and the ability to influence across engineering, design, marketing, sales, finance, and customer-facing teams.

Where You Will Make an Impact

Product Vision & Strategy

Define and evolve the product vision, strategy, and multi-year roadmap aligned to Ellucian’s Student Success objectives and overall company strategy.
Identify market opportunities, competitive differentiation, and growth levers to expand market share and product adoption.
Translate strategic priorities into actionable product initiatives that drive measurable business results.

End-to-End Business Ownership

Own the holistic success of your product(s), including product performance, growth, adoption, and overall business impact.
Partner with enablement, sales, marketing, finance, and customer success to support pricing strategy, packaging evolution, sales effectiveness, and expansion opportunities.
Monitor product health through KPIs (ARR growth, adoption, retention, unit expansion, customer outcomes) and proactively drive optimization initiatives.

Full Product Lifecycle Leadership

Lead product discovery through deep customer research, institutional engagement, and data analysis to uncover unmet needs.
Drive solution definition, experience design, and iterative delivery in close partnership with engineering and UX.
Ensure successful go-to-market planning, launch readiness, and post-launch performance tracking.
Scale early-stage or high-growth products into enterprise-grade, secure, reliable, and scalable SaaS solutions.

AI-Driven Product Innovation

Identify and embed AI-driven capabilities that enhance user outcomes, improve institutional decision-making, and create competitive differentiation.
Leverage AI tools and modern product technologies to improve product discovery, prioritization, and delivery efficiency.
Partner with engineering and data teams to responsibly implement AI features that align with customer trust, compliance, and data governance standards.

Cross-Functional Leadership & Influence

Act as the connective leader across engineering, design, marketing, sales, finance, and customer success to ensure alignment and execution excellence.
Influence without direct authority, building strong partnerships to drive outcomes across teams.
Clearly communicate product strategy, trade-offs, performance metrics, and investment cases to senior leadership.

Data-Driven Execution & Continuous Improvement

Establish and manage clear success metrics for your product area.
Use quantitative and qualitative data to prioritize investments, manage trade-offs, and guide roadmap decisions.
Continuously evaluate opportunities to improve scalability, performance, customer value, and operational efficiency.

Risk & Scale Management

Identify risks in product, technical architecture, go-to-market readiness, or customer adoption, and proactively develop mitigation strategies.
Drive the maturation of products from emerging solutions to scalable, enterprise-grade offerings that meet institutional demands.

What You Will Bring

8+ years of experience in product management within SaaS, edtech, or enterprise technology environments.
Demonstrated experience owning products end-to-end, including business performance and growth outcomes — not solely backlog management.
Proven track record of taking new or emerging products from early-stage development to scalable, enterprise-ready solutions.

Strategic & Commercial Acumen

Strong understanding of SaaS business models, pricing strategies, revenue growth levers, and product-market fit dynamics.
Experience partnering with go-to-market teams to drive product adoption, unit growth, and customer expansion.
Ability to think beyond feature delivery and operate with full business accountability.

AI & Modern Technology Fluency

Experience incorporating AI capabilities into product strategy and delivery.
Strong understanding of AI/ML fundamentals, responsible AI principles, and data-driven product innovation.
Demonstrated ability to leverage AI tools to enhance product discovery, decision-making, and operational effectiveness.

Product Lifecycle Mastery

Expertise in managing the full product lifecycle from discovery through launch and scale.
Strong experience in agile methodologies and iterative SaaS delivery models.
Comfort managing ambiguity while building clarity and alignment across stakeholders.

Analytical & Execution Excellence

Data-driven mindset with experience defining KPIs and using metrics to guide prioritization and optimization.
Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to manage complexity and make high-quality trade-offs.

Influence & Communication

Exceptional written and verbal communication skills.
Proven ability to influence cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders without direct reporting authority.
Experience presenting product strategies and performance insights to executive audiences.

Passion for Student Success

Deep interest in transforming higher education through technology solutions that improve student outcomes and institutional effectiveness.

What makes #Ellucianlife

Comprehensive health coverage: medical, dental, and vision
Flexible time off
Thrive Flex Lifestyle Account (LSA) that allows you to contribute towards your health, financial or learning interests
401k w/ match & BrightPlan - to help you save for the future
Parental Leave
5 charitable days to support the community that supports us
Telemedicine
Wellness
Headspace Care (mental health)
Wellbeats (virtual fitness classes)
RethinkCare & Wellthy– caregiver support
Diversity and inclusion programs which provide access to internal employee resource groups
Employee referral bonuses to encourage the addition of great new people to the team
We Foster a learning culture with:
Education Assistance Program
Professional development opportunities

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