Group Product Manager, NextGen

Nelnet Business Services (NBS), a division of Nelnet, Inc., provides payment technology and education services to more than 1,200 higher education institutions, nearly 12,000 K-12 schools, and millions of individual students, families, and supporters across the globe. Our culture of service enables us to form long-lasting and trusted partnerships, while our focus on creativity and innovative solutions empowers our customer communities to thrive.

Next Gen Web Solutions (NextGen), a Nelnet company, builds the software that keeps some of higher education’s most essential administrative work moving—scholarships, financial aid verification, digital forms, and student employment. For more than 18 years, NextGen has partnered with colleges, universities, and foundations to bring accuracy, compliance, speed, and security to those processes, and today our solutions serve more than 600 institutions and over 20 million students. We are now investing in a dedicated product team to lead the next chapter of the NextGen portfolio, and we are seeking an experienced, hands-on product leader to help build it—someone who will guide a small team of Product Managers while staying close enough to the work to ship alongside them.
The Group Product Manager is a player-coach role. You will personally own one or more NextGen solutions—running discovery, writing requirements, and shipping with your engineering and design partners—while leading and growing the Product Managers who own the rest of the portfolio. You will shape a cohesive strategy across NextGen’s solutions, keep the team aligned across engineering, design, sales, implementation, and client support, and make sure every release lands with real impact for the campus administrators, employers, students, and families our institutions serve. Reporting into senior product leadership, you will set the bar for product craft at NextGen.

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES

Hands-On Product Ownership

• Personally own one or more NextGen solutions end to end—running discovery, writing requirements, making the prioritization calls, and partnering daily with engineering and design to ship.

• Stay close to the details: dig into the data, prototype and pressure-test ideas, review designs, and validate solutions with the financial aid, student employment, and campus administrators who rely on our products every day.

• Set the bar for product craft by example, modeling the discovery, writing, and decision-making you expect from the PMs you lead.

Team Leadership & Development

• Lead, mentor, and grow a small team of Product Managers, setting clear expectations, helping each PM sharpen their craft, and helping recruit the talent that will join the team as it expands.

• Foster a high-agency, outcome-oriented culture—and the lightweight product practices to support it—where PMs operate with confidence in ambiguity and hold themselves accountable to measurable business results.

• Balance hands-on coaching with real autonomy—giving your PMs ownership of their areas while stepping in directly when a problem needs your attention.

Product Strategy & Execution

• Own the product vision, strategy, and roadmap across the NextGen portfolio, translating business goals into a sequenced plan that delivers value to institutions and the students they serve.

• Identify opportunities to connect the portfolio—shared workflows, integrations, and data—so that NextGen solutions deliver more value together than they do on their own.

• Identify and build practical applications of AI across the portfolio, pushing for experiences that eliminate manual work for campus staff and simplify the journey for students, rather than ones that are only incrementally better.

• Keep a close eye on the higher education landscape—federal financial aid and student employment policy, competitive moves, and shifting institutional needs—and fold what you learn back into the roadmap.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with sales, marketing, implementation, and client support to plan and execute launches, making sure each release is market-ready, lands commercially, and is easy for institutions to adopt.

• Work closely with engineering on architecture and delivery cadence, managing trade-offs transparently to keep product quality, reliability, and timelines on track—especially around the time-sensitive cycles of the academic and financial aid year.

• Define success metrics across the portfolio—spanning adoption, retention, workflow completion, time saved for campus staff, and institutional satisfaction—and hold the team accountable to outcomes, not just outputs.

• Collaborate with compliance, security, and risk teams to ensure releases meet our SOC audit standards, FERPA, accessibility requirements, and applicable federal financial aid and student employment regulations.

Annual compensation range for this role is $115,000 - $165,000 depending on experience.

Nelnet values flexibility and understands the importance of work-life integration. This position offers a remote option for candidates who live more than 30 miles from a Nelnet office location. Candidates who live within 30 miles of a Nelnet office are expected to have a hybrid schedule, working in office at least three days per week.

Please note that we are unable to provide visa sponsorship for this position. To be considered, candidates must already be authorized to work in the United States without the need for current or future sponsorship

EDUCATION

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Computer Science, Finance, or a related field.

Preferred:

• Advanced degree with emphasis on strategy, technology, or leadership.

EXPERIENCE

Required:

• 6+ years of product management experience with a strong track record of shipping products yourself, including 1+ years mentoring or directly managing other Product Managers.
• Experience partnering with go-to-market teams to launch complex SaaS or platform products.
• Track record of personally shipping AI-enabled or data-driven software products with measurable business impact.
• Proven ability to align and influence stakeholders across engineering, design, and commercial functions.

Preferred:

• Experience in higher education technology, fintech, payments, or B2B2C platform businesses.
• Experience contributing to or leading platform modernization, replatforming, or migration work.
• Familiarity with PCI Level 1 compliance, payment processing workflows, or ERP integrations (Workday, Banner, PeopleSoft, Colleague).

YOU HAVE

• Player-coach mindset: You are energized by doing the work and developing others at the same time. You are as comfortable writing a spec or digging into data as you are coaching a PM through a hard call—and you know when each is needed.
• Vision that rallies teams: You articulate a compelling direction for your product area and your team, and make others want to build it with you. Your team knows exactly what winning looks like and why it matters.
• High agency: You take ownership of outcomes beyond the formal scope of the role, remove blockers proactively, and drive decisions forward. You default to action and accountability, especially in ambiguous situations.
• Builder’s instinct: You understand how great products are made and have the judgment to make hard prioritization calls. You push for elegant, impactful solutions over feature accumulation and hold the bar high on craft and quality.
• GTM fluency: You understand how products get to market and know how to partner with commercial teams on launches that drive real adoption and revenue.
• People leadership: You invest in your team’s growth, create psychological safety alongside high expectations, and help a small team of PMs do the best work of their careers.
• Clear communication: You communicate with clarity and conviction—with your team, your partners, and leadership—translating product complexity into crisp narratives that drive alignment.
• Customer obsession: You maintain a rigorous connection to the institutions, administrators, and students Horizon serves—using that empathy to sharpen strategy and ensure the team is always solving the right problems.
• Agility in ambiguity: You thrive in a high-stakes, evolving environment, making sound decisions under uncertainty and keeping your team focused and energized even as priorities shift.

Our benefits package includes medical, dental, vision, HSA and FSA, generous earned time off, 401K/student loan repayment, life insurance & AD&D insurance, employee assistance program, employee stock purchase program, tuition reimbursement, performance-based incentive pay, short- and long-term disability, and a robust wellness program. Click here to learn more about our benefits: Benefits & Perks - Nelnet Inc

Nelnet is committed to providing a welcoming and respectful workplace where all associates have the opportunity to succeed. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we ensure that all qualified applicants are considered for employment. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion/creed, national origin, gender, sex, marital status, age, disability, use of a guide dog or service animal, sexual orientation, military/veteran status, or any other status protected by federal, state, or local law. We value the unique contributions of every team member and believe that a positive work environment benefits everyone.  

Qualified individuals with disabilities who require reasonable accommodations in order to apply or compete for positions at Nelnet may request such accommodations by contacting Corporate Recruiting at 402-486-5725 or [email protected].

Nelnet is a Drug Free and Tobacco Free Workplace.

Use of Artificial Intelligence in Hiring

We may use automated or artificial intelligence enabled tools to assist with the initial review of applications, such as identifying relevant skills or experience. These tools are used to support human review and do not make hiring decisions. A recruiter reviews applications and determines which candidates move forward in the hiring process. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Pre-Use Notice: Automated Tools in Hiring