Group Product Manager, Horizon

Nelnet is a company that provides payment technology and education services, and they are seeking a Group Product Manager for their Horizon platform. This role involves hands-on product ownership, team leadership, and strategic execution to enhance the platform and ensure its success in the higher education sector.

Responsibilities:

• Personally own a core area of the Horizon platform 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 real users so the team ships work that is genuinely useful
• Set the bar for product craft by example, modeling the discovery, writing, and decision-making you expect from the PMs you lead
• Lead, mentor, and grow a small team of Product Managers responsible for Horizon workstreams, setting clear expectations and helping each PM sharpen their craft
• Foster a high-agency, outcome-oriented culture 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
• Own the strategy and roadmap for your group’s areas of Horizon, translating NCC’s broader product vision into a sequenced plan that delivers value to institutions and students
• Identify and build practical applications of AI across your areas of the platform, pushing for experiences that are genuinely useful rather than incrementally better
• Keep a close eye on the higher education payments landscape, competitive moves, and emerging regulatory requirements, and fold what you learn back into the roadmap
• Partner with sales, marketing, implementation, and client success to plan and execute Horizon launches, making sure each release is market-ready and lands commercially
• Work closely with engineering on architecture and delivery cadence, managing trade-offs transparently to keep both product quality and timelines on track
• Define success metrics for your areas—spanning adoption, retention, payment completion, and institutional satisfaction—and hold the team accountable to outcomes, not just outputs
• Collaborate with compliance, security, and risk teams to ensure releases meet PCI Level 1 standards and applicable higher education regulatory requirements

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Computer Science, Finance, or a related field
• 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
• Advanced degree with emphasis on strategy, technology, or leadership
• 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)