Product Manager at PenChecks in La Mesa, CA

Job Title: Product Manager

Department: Product

FLSA Status: Exempt

Employment Type: Full Time

Work Hours: Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Work Location: In-office or hybrid in La Mesa, CA or remote

Reports To: Manager, Product Management

Direct Reports: None

Summary

PenChecks, Inc. is an established financial services organization transforming into a financial technology company. The Product Manager advocates for users and creates innovative, intuitive, and seamless product experiences.

The Product Manager translates customer needs, market insight, and company strategy into clear product direction and an executable roadmap. This role leads cross-functional product work from discovery through delivery and optimization, ensuring teams are aligned on the problem to solve, the outcomes to achieve, and the measures of success.

The ideal candidate combines customer empathy, business judgment, analytical thinking, and disciplined execution. They are comfortable navigating ambiguity, making tradeoffs, and influencing stakeholders without relying on formal authority.

What Success Looks Like

· Strategic clarity: A well-articulated product vision, measurable goals, and transparent priorities connect day-to-day delivery to broader business outcomes.

· Customer value: Product decisions are grounded in validated customer and user needs, with clear evidence that solutions improve the experience.

· Focused execution: Cross-functional teams understand the desired outcome, scope, dependencies, and definition of success.

· Informed decisions: Roadmap and investment choices are supported by data, research, risk assessment, and explicit tradeoffs.

· Continuous improvement: Product performance, delivery practices, and stakeholder feedback improve both the product and the way the team works.

Key Responsibilities

Product Strategy and Portfolio Alignment:

· Develop and communicate product vision, strategy, goals, and positioning in alignment with company priorities.

· Create and maintain an outcome-oriented roadmap that balances customer value, business impact, technical feasibility, risk, and capacity.

· Identify opportunities through market research, competitive analysis, customer feedback, product data, and operational insight.

· Prepare clear recommendations and decision materials for product and portfolio governance discussions.

Discovery and Customer Insight:

· Partner with research, design, client-facing teams, and subject matter experts to understand customer problems and unmet needs.

· Validate opportunities and solution concepts using appropriate qualitative and quantitative methods.

· Synthesize insights into clear product requirements, experience principles, and measurable outcomes.

Delivery and Cross-Functional Leadership:

· Lead product work across design, engineering, business analysis, operations, compliance, marketing, sales, and service teams.

· Define epics, capabilities, requirements, and priorities at the level needed for effective delivery.

· Make timely scope and priority decisions, manage dependencies, and escalate risks with recommended options.

· Participate in activity planning, refinement, reviews, and release readiness while preserving ownership of delivery methods.

· Coordinate launch, adoption, communication, training, and operational readiness with relevant partners.

Measurement and Lifecycle Management:

· Define success metrics and establish measurement plans before launch.

· Monitor adoption, customer outcomes, operational performance, financial impact, quality, and risk indicators, as applicable.

· Use evidence to recommend continued investment, optimization, repositioning, consolidation, or retirement.

· Share product performance and insights through concise, decision-oriented updates.

· Own the success of product initiatives based on client adoption, agreed objectives, KPIs, and Net Promoter Score for products under management.

· Perform other duties as assigned.

Required Knowledge, Skills and Experience

· Minimum of two years of B2B enterprise software product management experience.

· Minimum of three years of experience in the retirement services industry or with companies that develop software supporting the retirement services industry.

· Experience managing digital products, platforms, or customer experiences through discovery, delivery, launch, and optimization.

· Demonstrated ability to translate strategy and customer problems into priorities, requirements, and measurable outcomes.

· Strong written, verbal, facilitation, and executive presentation skills.

· Ability to interpret product, customer, financial, and operational data to support decisions.

· Ability to manage competing priorities, ambiguity, dependencies, and stakeholder expectations.

· Passion for customer experience and strong customer-backed logic in decision-making.

· Self-motivated, with a demonstrated ability to influence stakeholders and build alignment.

· Ability to prioritize functional needs effectively and communicate prioritization criteria.

· Ability to develop effective product requirements that support efficient development efforts.

· Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.

· Public-speaking proficiency and stage presence.

Preferred Qualifications

· Three years of Product Owner, Product Manager, or Business Analyst experience with enterprise financial technology.

· Two years of user-experience development experience.

· Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.

· Familiarity with compliance, privacy, security, accessibility, and operational risk considerations in product development.

· Pragmatic Institute Product Marketing certification.

· CSPO, CPM, ACPMPO, Lean Product, SAFe, CUXP, or a similar certification.

· Experience applying agile principles to projects.

· Experience using product design and management tools such as Figma, Adobe XD, Balsamiq, Jira, Confluence, and Adobe Creative Suite.

Leadership and Supervisory Responsibilities

This role has no direct reports. The Product Manager leads through influence and coordinates cross-functional product work across internal teams and stakeholders.

Compensation

The anticipated base salary range for this position is $140,000 to $160,000.

The actual compensation offered will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, skills, internal equity, and market considerations.

Physical Demands and Work Environment

The employee is often required to sit and use their hands and fingers to handle or feel. The employee is occasionally required to stand, walk, reach with arms and hands, climb or balance, and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. Vision abilities required by this job include close vision. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Work environment: ADA-compliant office building or approved home office, consistent with the role’s in-office, hybrid, or remote work arrangement.

Other

This job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities required of the employee. Other duties, responsibilities, and activities may change or be assigned at any time with or without notice.

We are interested in every qualified candidate who is eligible to work in the United States. However, we are not able to sponsor visas.