Senior Manager, Product Analytics

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:
 

Grade: Management Technical 713

Job Description

Reporting to the Director of Product Operations, the Senior Manager of Product Analytics is responsible for developing a team of Product Analysts who will collaborate with leadership to identify, create, and report on product metrics. Focusing on business and data insights, the Senior Manager will aid in the expansion of the team to include customer and market insights. The Senior Manager will drive change and improve standards for how product data will be used and displayed throughout the organization. By increasing visibility into insights and tying them to business OKRs, the Senior Manager will greatly contribute to WGU’s mission and vision.

 

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Hires, develops, and inspires a team of Product Analysts to do their best work and foster team collaboration and best practices.
• Works with and coaches Product Managers on success metrics to create product scorecards.
• Collaborates with key stakeholders & Product Managers to aggregate and normalize data from across the organization.
• Leads in the development of a middle layer of data outputs to help connect product usage metrics to larger objectives that focus on outcomes not outputs.
• Defines and maintains product health metrics.
• Oversees and manages a database of users that product teams can utilize for research.
• Leads in the collection and analysis of internal data to help inform the product strategy and roadmap.
• Facilitates and aggregates external market research.
• Be the domain expert and help enable decision making through data and insights.
• Fosters an environment that enables cross-functional feedback to stakeholders and product teams.
• Builds out an analytics tool stack that includes a participant database, research tools, findings database, sales & support feedback mechanism, and market research reports and subscriptions.
• Creates and maintains product data dashboards that enable product managers to self-serve.
• Collaborates heavily with UX to define research processes and provide research tools.
• Serves as a primary point of contact for all data integration and best-practice-sharing activities between cross-functional teams.

Knowledge, Skill and Abilities:

• Excellent leadership and product management skills
• Ability to build consensus and motivate others
• Strong analytical, qualitative, and quantitative skills.
• Technical knowledge and depth necessary to help manage product data and metrics strategies.
• Experience with business and product usage analytics.
• Able to glean insights from data and craft a compelling story in presentation form.
• Comfortable working across functions and teams to gather data.
• Understand customer and market segments and cohorts.
• The ability to think strategically and understand how data helps with problem solving.
• The ability to use data and metrics to back up assumptions and evaluate outcomes.
• Experience with ThoughtSpot, Tableau or other visualization tools.
• Experience or knowledge of basic programming and DB technologies (SQL, Python, Cassandra, MongoDB, Redis, Couchbase, Oracle, MySQL, Teradata).

Competencies:
Organizational Impact:

• Develops plan to accomplish division or job area responsibilities that align with department.
• Performance may affect department results.
• Work requires some knowledge of the University to recognize impact of decisions made.
• Compiles data to prepare budgets.

Problem Solving and Decision Making:

• Responsible for making improvements of processes or systems to enhance performance of the job area.
• Accountable for coordinating activities and maintaining relationships with internal (and occasionally external) parties.
• Assignments received and problems faced are broad and undefined, and require use of analytical concepts, investigation, and knowledge from prior experience.

Communication and Influence:

• Communicates within job area and occasionally with external groups and external facing professionals (i.e. Admissions)
• Communicates frequently with external groups on routine and more complex matters.
• Ensures compliance with university policies and procedures within job area and may influence others outside of job area to justify and gain cooperation for policies, practices, and procedures.

Leadership and Talent Management:

• Manages a team of professionals. Manages the work of assigned employees and/or supervisors who generally exercise some latitude and independence in their assignments.
• Ensures proper training of team members, and actively participates in hiring, firing, and promotion decisions. Conducts performance reviews and recommends salary reviews.
• Primarily achieves goals through leading a team.

Job Qualifications:
Minimum Qualifications:

• Typically requires a University Degree or equivalent and a minimum of 7 years specific experience which generally includes a minimum of 3 years leading a team.
• Requires significant management knowledge to lead the department. Generally, has advanced level knowledge and skills within a specific technical or professional discipline with understanding of the impact of work on other areas of the University.

Department Specific Minimum Qualifications:

• Master’s degree or an equivalent combination of a bachelor’s degree with training and/or experience.
• Minimum 5+ years of software Product Management experience
• Minimum 3 years of experience in a leadership role
• Experience with product analytics and metrics

Preferred Qualifications:

• Pragmatic Institute Certification
• Product Operations training

Physical Requirements:
Prolonged periods sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
Must be able to lift up to 15 pounds at times.

This position requires occasional travel of up to 20%, including required attendance at designated company summits (typically one to two per year). Additional travel may include conferences, visits to company locations, and other business-related events as needed. Additional travel may be assigned as needed to support business requirements.

Position & Application Details

Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.

Additional Information

Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It’s not all-inclusive.

Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at recruiting@wgu.edu.

Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.