Product Manager III - CoBank

Benefits Overview:

A career at CoBank can offer you the opportunity to make a personal impact on the people and communities where we do business. When you choose a career with CoBank, you make a difference by standing for something that matters. In order to be the best, we hire the best!

Remarkable Benefits Offered by CoBank

• Careers with a purpose. Stand for something!
• Time-Off Packages, 20 days of vacation, 10 paid sick days and 11 paid holidays
• Competitive Compensation & Incentive
• Hybrid work model: flexible arrangements for most positions
• Benefits Packages, including Medical, Dental and Vision coverage, Disability, AD&D, and Life Insurance
• Robust associate training and development with CoBank University
• Tuition reimbursement for higher education up to 10K
• Outstanding 401k: up to 6% matching and additional 3% non-elective contribution
• Community Impact: United Way Angel Day, Volunteer Day and Associate Directed Contribution
• Associate Resource Groups: creating a culture of diversity and inclusion
• Recognize a fellow associate through our GEM awards

 

Job Description:

At CoBank, our Product Managers lead, enable, and optimize CoBank's Customer and Associate experiences. Your primary goal is to ensure that the relevant capabilities are aligned with the company's overall goals and are meeting the needs of its users. You will do this by providing leadership oversight for the governance and management of this product capability, including the strategic evolution to proactively maintain the bank's competitiveness in the marketplace. Provide leadership accountability for driving the adherence to the SAFe Agile framework and practices. Collaborate with Executive Leadership and the Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) team to develop a roadmap for the relevant capabilities to achieve and support the bank's strategic priorities. Responsible for coordinating and leading related initiatives as required. Collaborates within the SAFe Agile framework to evaluate and build organizational trust in CoBank's data and systems, leveraging tools to enable future innovation and strategies. The Product Manager is accountable for the delivery, optimization, product performance monitoring and strategic direction of the relevant enterprise capability. Ensures the roadmap is and remains in alignment with CoBank's strategic direction. Oversees and delivers process standardization, documentation, optimization, automation, training, knowledge sharing, and scalability in alignment with the bank's strategies to: meet customers' needs; facilitate frictionless interactions; help support and grow customer relationships; improve the customer experience and self-service capabilities; enhance productivity; and quickly identify and respond to future opportunities.

Essential Functions:

Actively works with Executive Leadership and the Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) team to define, implement, grow and drive the bank’s strategy that aligns with the organization's objectives and associate needs. Including, identifying and establishing the desired future state experiences and capability roadmaps.
Digital First: Aligns and assists in the delivery of the bank’s Digital First movement, leveraging the strategic capabilities to demonstrate execution against the Digital First Blueprint and key strategic priorities. Manages planning and delivery of key themes, translating objectives through distribution of best-in-class experiences and tech capabilities.
Objectives: Drive product objectives with business outcomes and success metrics, design thinking, customer feedback, product performance monitoring and competitive analysis. Leads collaboration across CoBank to evaluate, educate and promote the expectations, success criteria and key performance indicators (KPIs).
Product Roadmap: Create a strategic product roadmap that outlines the product development lifecycle, milestones, timelines and is inclusive of E2E processes, data informed by current product performance metrics, supporting technology and controls required to ensure dependability, scalability and defensibility.
Product Development: Collaborate with designers and developers to ensure that the digital product meets the organization's objectives, in line with the expectation of the market and customer needs.
User Experience: Ensure that the digital product is user-friendly, easy to navigate, and meets customer needs. Collaborates with Executive Leadership to communicate desired future state across CoBank departments, functional and sub-process groups.
Metrics and Analytics: Defines, tracks and manages the expectations and success criteria, through analyzing product performance using leading indicator metrics such as customer experience/user engagement, conversion rates, data structure, quality and usage; organizational capabilities and skills; technology enablement; revenue to identify optimization opportunities. Supplies these metrics to LPM as feedback to influence the Portfolio roadmap.
Stakeholder Management: Manage stakeholder expectations and communication to ensure that the digital product meets business objectives and user needs.
Budget Management: In partnership with the LPM, manage the product development budget to ensure that resources are allocated effectively and efficiently. Collaborate with technology, operations, product teams, security and business partners to coordinate and manage activities maximizing impact and overall return on investment.
Risk Management: Identify and manage potential risks that may impact the success of the holistic digital product, including the technical health. Identify and pro-actively manage challenges impacting the effectiveness and optimization, including any associated risks and issues relating to: engagement/adoption; behaviors; knowledge and skills; competing organizational priorities; customer needs and requirements; training, knowledge sharing, and operational issues; and change and process improvement challenges. Approves & communicates when product Features are ready to be released to customers.
Vendor Management: Work with Vendor Management team for contractual relationships. Directly manage and oversee operational engagement with vendors.
Work Prioritization: Oversight for the evaluation, prioritization and authorization of any requested changes and/or enhancements to the product and its associated processes defined through Epics. Works within SAFe Agile to decompose Epics prioritized through the Lean Portfolio Management process, into Features to be planned by Agile Release Trains. Identifies, defines, initiates and implements organizational transitions and process improvement opportunities to realize the full capability and strategic objectives. Responsible for prioritizing the Features being considered for Planning Interval (PI) Planning on cadence.
Optimization: Drives the optimization of supporting sub-processes to maximize E2E process success of the capability. Modifies sub-process KPIs and operational activities as necessary.
Reporting: Manages the Product roadmap, dashboards and reports, providing critical management tools for effective oversight. Leveraging Product roadmaps to consistently communicate out to Executive Stakeholders the product’s strategies, expectations, and achievements.
Manages staff. Sets performance standards, manages workflow, grants authorities, evaluates performance, provides coaching/mentoring, and recommends personnel actions within delegated authorities. Consults with Human Resources as appropriate.
Responsible for understanding the market and farm credit’s niche customer landscape in order to maintain competitiveness. Ensures product compliance with bank policies and regulatory standards. Maintains expertise regarding competition, best practices and benchmarks.

Education:

• Bachelor's Degree required
• Master's Degree preferred

Work Experience:

10 years of relevant experience in financial institutions, required
6 years of product management, strategy or consulting experience required
4 years years in the financial services industry required
Excellent communication skills
Excellent problem solving skills
Excellent interpersonal and leadership skills
Excellent conflict management skills
Excellent organizational and time management skills
Proven ability to think strategically and develop roadmaps for products and services with no guidance
Proven ability to exercise influence, gain and retain confidence, and drive engagement from bank management and leadership

Physical Exertion Details:

Sedentary Exerting up to 10 pounds of force occasionally (Occasionally: activity or condition exists up to 1/3 of the time) and/or a negligible amount of force frequently (Frequently: activity or condition exists from 1/3 to 2/3 of the time) to lift, carry, push, pull, or otherwise move objects, including the human body. Sedentary work involves sitting most of the time, but may involve walking or standing for brief periods of time. Jobs are sedentary if walking and standing are required only occasionally and all other sedentary criteria are met.

About CoBank:

The typical base pay range for this role is between $140,051.50 - $194,741.61. Compensation may vary based on individual job-related knowledge, skills, expertise, and experience. This position is eligible for a discretionary annual incentive program driven by organization and individual performance.

The listed salary, other compensation and benefits information is accurate as of the date of this posting. This job will be posted for a minimum of five (5) business days or until the position is filled. CoBank reserves the right to adjust compensation for all positions and to modify or discontinue benefits programs at any time in its sole discretion, subject to applicable law.

 

CoBank is a cooperative bank serving vital industries across rural America. The bank provides loans, leases, export financing and other financial services to agribusinesses and rural power, water and communications providers in all 50 states. The bank also provides wholesale loans and other financial services to affiliated Farm Credit associations serving more than 76,000 farmers, ranchers and other rural borrowers in 23 states around the country. CoBank is a member of the Farm Credit System, a nationwide network of banks and retail lending associations chartered to support the borrowing needs of U.S. agriculture, rural infrastructure and rural communities. Headquartered outside Denver, Colorado, CoBank serves customers from regional banking centers across the U.S. and also maintains an international representative office in Singapore.

 

REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION

We are committed to ensuring that our online application process provides an equal employment opportunity to all applicants, including qualified individuals with disabilities. If you are an applicant with a disability, or are assisting an applicant with a disability, and require accessibility assistance or would like to request a reasonable accommodation for any aspect of the application process, including completing an application, interviewing, or otherwise participating in the employee selection process, please submit a request by emailing recruiting@cobank.com. Include your contact information and specific details about your requested accommodation.

 

Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa at this time.

 

CoBank is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

 

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.