Associate Manager, Product Management

Associate Manager, Product Management

Position Summary
As the Associate Manager of Product Management, you’ll play a critical role in driving corporate strategy, product-level P&Ls, and operating rhythms. You will own product strategy and roadmaps while serving as the Product Owner for one or more crossfunctional agile squads delivering MeridianLink Mortgage (LOS) and MeridianLink Mortgage Access (POS) products and features. In this capacity, you will own the product backlog, define user value, write and prioritize user stories, and acceptance criteria to ensure outcomes align to business objectives and customer needs. You will be the central point of accountability across design, engineering, QA, and gotomarket as features move through our agile SDLC into production and distribution.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Product Management

• Product Strategy & Roadmap: Define and evolve product strategy, roadmaps, and capital allocation to drive portfolio outcomes and product-line P&L performance.

• Market & Financials: Monitor market trends, competitive dynamics, pricing, and channel performance; translate insights into prioritized bets and investment cases.

• Customer Engagement: Engage with customers and partners to develop and refine portfolio strategy, influence industry direction, and validate product decisions.

Product Owner Responsibilities (Agile SDLC)

• Backlog Ownership: Own and maintain a transparent, prioritized product backlog for one or more agile squads; ensure a tight thread from strategy to epics to stories.

• User Stories & Acceptance Criteria: Author clear, testable user stories, acceptance criteria, and non-functional requirements; ensure Definition of Ready and Definition of Done are met.

• Sprint Delivery: Partner with the Scrum Master and Engineering to plan sprints, refine stories, balance scope vs. capacity, and accept completed work.

• Prioritization & Value: Use data and stakeholder input to prioritize for customer value, compliance, risk, and ROI; manage tradeoffs and dependencies across teams.

• Release Readiness: Coordinate release planning, UAT, documentation, and enablement with QA, Compliance, Support, and GTM teams.

• Metrics: Track and act on delivery and product health metrics (e.g., adoption, NPS/CSAT, cycle time, predictability, quality/defect escape rate, business impact).

Cross-Functional Leadership & Communication

• Central Resource: Serve as the central resource across design, engineering, QA, security, compliance, and marketing as features move into production and distribution.

• Team Guidance: Direct and guide the work of teams and/or individuals, providing clarity on goals, outcomes, and measures of success.

• Stakeholder Communication: Communicate decisions, tradeoffs, and outcomes to executives, peers, and squads with clarity and frequency.

Qualifications — Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

Required

• Education & Experience: Bachelor’s degree and 4+ years of relevant product management experience.

• Product Owner Experience: 2+ years acting as a Product Owner in Scrum or Kanban environments (can be concurrent with PM responsibilities).

• Backlog & Tooling: Proficiency with agile tools (e.g., Azure DevOps or Jira) for backlog management, roadmapping, and reporting.

• Analytical Skills: Ability to analyze data and follow established practices to derive clear answers and make decisions.

• Cost & Performance: Contribute to cost management and product-line performance; understand basic P&L levers.

• Interpersonal Skills: Daily interaction with subordinates and/or functional peer groups; strong collaboration and communication.

• Regulatory/Quality Mindset: Comfort working with QA, InfoSec, and Compliance requirements within a regulated environment.

Preferred

• Certifications: CSPO/PSPO, SAFe POPM, or equivalent agile certifications.

• Domain: Experience in mortgage/fintech, lending workflows, or financial services integrations.

• Discovery: Experience with customer discovery, journey mapping, and experimentation (e.g., prototypes, A/B tests).