Product Owner, Academic Operations at Kuali

United States

$106k - $129k

<div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><b style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-size: 14px;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgb(70, 141, 203);">About the Role</span></b></div> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"> <p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;">We&#x2019;re looking for a Product Owner &#x2013; Academic Operations to drive the vision, prioritization, and delivery of Kuali&#x2019;s academic operations solutions.&#xa0;<br> As Product Owner, you&#x2019;ll translate institutional needs into actionable product requirements, ensuring our software empowers universities to streamline curriculum, scheduling, and academic workflows.</p> <p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;">You&#x2019;ll collaborate closely with Product Managers, Designers, and Engineers to deliver high-impact features that improve operational efficiency and student outcomes</p> <p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 10pt;"><b style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-size: 14px;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgb(70, 141, 203);">Who are we?&#xa0;</span></b></p> Kuali builds software solutions for higher education. We help our customers &#x2014; colleges &amp; universities &#x2014; focus on providing a fantastic education to students by decreasing their administrative costs. We work in a competitive space, ripe for innovation, with users ready to be delighted.<br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"> <br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"> <b style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-size: 14px;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgb(70, 141, 203);">Our Culture</span></span></b><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"> As a company, we are guided by our <a href="https://www.kuali.co/jobs#values" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgb(22, 108, 241); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;">cultural values:</a></div> <ul style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; margin: 1em 0px; list-style: disc; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Iterate to evolve</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Cultivate openness</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Act with accountability</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Assume the best</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Practice humility</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Deliver amazing experiences</li> </ul> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">At Kuali, we learn from and teach each other, we practice transparency and empathy, we delight in delivering value to our customers, and we WIN!</div> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">&#xa0;</div> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">We work remotely and have for years. Distributed work is in our bones, with a history of institutions working across state lines on open-source software for more than ten years. Our employees each work in the environment where they&#x2019;re happiest, from Pennsylvania to Seattle. We work consciously to create a collaborative and healthy remote work culture, and we travel to meet in person a few times each year.&#xa0;</div> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"> <b style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-size: 14px;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgb(70, 141, 203);">Everyone should love their work.</span></span></b></div> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">At Kuali, we embrace diversity and inclusion at every level. We value and respect individuals from all backgrounds, recognizing that a rich tapestry of experiences and perspectives fuels our success as a company and enriches our collective human experience.</div> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"> <b style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-size: 14px;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgb(70, 141, 203);">What you&#x2019;ll be responsible for</span></span></b></div> <ul style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; margin: 1em 0px; list-style: disc; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: InterVariable, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Own the product backlog for Kuali Research, ensuring clarity, prioritization, and alignment with strategic goals.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Translate customer feedback, institutional requirements, and product vision into actionable user stories and acceptance criteria.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Collaborate daily with engineering and design teams to ensure timely, high&#x2011;quality delivery.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Partner with Product Managers to refine roadmap priorities and validate outcomes against customer needs.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Support release planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives to drive continuous improvement.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Serve as the voice of the customer within the scrum team, ensuring solutions meet real&#x2011;world research administration challenges.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Monitor product performance and collaborate on data&#x2011;driven decisions to enhance usability and adoption.</li> </ul> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: InterVariable, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">&#xa0;</div> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><b style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-size: 14px;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgb(70, 141, 203);">About you</span></span></b></div> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">We&#x2019;re looking for curious, enthusiastic, empathetic people to solve problems, execute on ideas, advocate for the customer, and contribute to a team culture built on trust and mutual respect.&#xa0;<br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"> We build and support systems using both Java and Node.js/React. We believe that great developers can always learn new tools. Above any specific tech stack, we&#x2019;re looking for versatile developers &#x2014; those who know when to think big and when to act small, and who are comfortable in both greenfield and refactoring projects.<br style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"> We believe the best results are created by teams who represent a broad range of ideas and perspectives. We value employees with diverse backgrounds and experiences.</div> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">&#xa0;</div> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-size: 14px;"><b style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">Ideal candidates have experience with:</b></span></div> <ul> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Own, prioritize, and continuously refine the Academic Operations product backlog, ensuring alignment with product strategy, customer needs, supporting evidence, technical dependencies, and team capacity.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Own specific roadmap initiatives - leading solution discovery and collaborating with engineering on delivery.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Collaborate with Product Managers to translate the product vision, strategy, roadmap priorities, and desired outcomes into achievable product increments.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Develop a strong understanding of Academic Operations users, institutional workflows, requirements, and higher education practices.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Translate customer feedback, user research, product data, and institutional requirements into clear user stories, acceptance criteria, and measurable outcomes.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Ensure backlog items are appropriately defined, prioritized, and ready for development.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Represent customer and user needs throughout the development process, answering questions and making timely scope and priority decisions.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Partner with Engineering and Design to develop intuitive, accessible, secure, scalable, and configurable solutions.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Manage tradeoffs among customer value, scope, quality, timing, technical constraints, and long-term product health.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Validate completed work through acceptance testing, stakeholder feedback, user research, and product data.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Lead product release-readiness activities, including documentation, internal enablement, implementation considerations, acceptance criteria validation, and stakeholder communication.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Partner with Sales, Marketing,&#xa0; Customer Success, Implementation, Support, and other customer-facing teams to ensure successful product launches and adoption.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Monitor adoption, usability, quality, and operational performance following release and translate findings into backlog improvements.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Triage product defects and customer-reported issues, balancing urgent customer needs with roadmap priorities, planned investments, and technical debt.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Communicate product progress, decisions, dependencies, risks, and outcomes clearly to internal and external stakeholders.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Use AI to improve the quality, speed, and throughput of backlog management, requirements development, analysis, and product delivery.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Contribute to the continuous improvement of Kuali&#x2019;s product development practices, standards, and AI-powered product operating system.<br> </li> </ul> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><b style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-size: 14px;">We&#x2019;d be delighted if you bring experience with:</span></b></div> <ul> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">5+ years of experience in product ownership or business analysis within SaaS or enterprise software.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Strong understanding of higher education operations&#x2014;curriculum, scheduling, or student systems.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Skilled in agile methodologies and backlog management.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Analytical mindset with a focus on outcomes and user experience.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Passion for improving education through technology.<br> </li> </ul> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: InterVariable, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;"><b style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;">Preferred Qualifications</b></div> <ul> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Experience with academic ERP or SIS integrations.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Familiarity with product analytics and data-driven decision-making.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Background in higher education administration or edtech product development.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">A collaborative, curious, and mission-driven mindset.<br> </li> </ul> <div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Arimo, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><b style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; font-size: 14px;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: rgb(70, 141, 203);">Perks</span></span></b></div> <ul style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; margin: 12px 0px; list-style: disc; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: InterVariable, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Remote-first work</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Top-of-the-line equipment of your choice to get your job done</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">A truly exceptional benefits package including full premium coverage for employee and dependent medical and dental care</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">401(k) matching</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Employee stock option plan</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Paid Maternity/Parental leave</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">All the paid time off you need (just work it out with your manager)</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Encouragement and support in learning and improving your skill-sets.</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Space to work on self-driven projects during quarterly &#x201c;hack weeks&#x201d;</li> <li style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; line-height: 20px;">Employee resource groups and community events</li> </ul><br>