Senior Product Manager

Handshake

Handshake

Product
San Francisco, CA, USA
Posted on Jan 23, 2024

Everyone is welcome at Handshake. We know diverse teams build better products and we are committed to creating an inclusive culture built on a foundation of respect for all individuals. We strongly encourage candidates from non-traditional backgrounds, historically marginalized or underrepresented groups to apply.

Your impact

Handshake is hiring a Senior Product Manager, reporting to the Senior Director of Product and playing a pivotal role in the evolution of our fast-growing early talent marketplace.

Handshake is uniquely positioned at students’ transition from college to early career. With the largest network of employers and college and university partners, Handshake is able to smartly bridge the connections of these organizations at scale. You will be a leader driving the next wave of innovation for Handshake’s enterprise marketplace products – the matching and managing of relationships between Higher Education Career Services teams and employers and recruiters expanding candidate pipelines through deeper connections with university partners.

You’ll be part of a close-knit cross-functional team including not just R&D, but also product marketing, support, sales and customer success—together building a truly game-changing marketplace platform. At the same time, you’ll be mindful about making a positive societal impact, creating experiences that progress Handshake toward our mission of democratizing opportunity.

Your role

  • As a senior product manager, you’ll plan and deliver a roadmap to:

    • Build a best-in-class enterprise toolkit: provide education partners with a platform that helps them to drive student outcomes, deepen connection points between employers and schools with smart recommendation, messaging and analytics features

    • Drive marketplace value: identify the key areas of value creation across all 3 sides of the network, and align the education product and UX to maximize these

    • Plan for scale: evaluate high-leverage areas of the product in service of Handshake’s continued growth to new student populations, partner types and geographic regions

    You’ll own the lifecycle end-to-end for your product area, including:

    • Product development process: Leading a high performing cross-functional team, partnering with engineering and design partners from research and roadmap planning to sprint-level delivery

    • Launch and adoption: Partner closely on go-to-market and implementation, working with marketing, sales and customer success. You never hesitate to roll up your sleeves and tackle something hands-on. It’s never someone else’s problem. You’ll run beta programs and pilots to maximize learning and minimize code investment, getting close to the customer and the details through the process.

    • Cross-Handshake partnership: Work with stakeholders across the education business and the other sides of the Handshake ecosystem (Employer and Student) to bring our partners along as we innovate quickly

    • Goals, metrics and tracking: Create a robust and clear thread of data from strategy through development through in-market iteration.

Your experience

  • Strong foundation in roadmap development and releasing products for complex, multifaceted marketplace businesses or SaaS platforms, ideally in SaaS or B2B2C marketplace like Handshake.

  • 5+ years partnering with engineering teams to ship code. Ideally in a many-stakeholder environment with dependencies and collaboration.

  • Extensive experience presenting both internally and externally including working with customers, users, and internal cross-functional partners and executives.

  • Focused on the customer. You’ve developed compelling products by diving deep into the world of the user, understanding their goals, motivations, words, and actions relating to the problems we solve. You listen and explore, and are able to guide research and customer conversations to yield truly applicable findings. You can separate the needs of the customer and the user and serve both parties.

  • You are confident using data, with judgment of its limitations and the minimum information needed to make decisions. You’ve partnered with data scientists for complex investigations, while also pulling data yourself and setting up dashboards for ongoing tracking.

  • You’re confident in making complex tradeoffs and educating all stakeholders on those tradeoffs through the process. You can point to times where you haven’t shipped exactly what people have asked for, and yet created high satisfaction for the product.

  • Mission-aligned. You have a true passion for and commitment to Handshake’s mission. You show up each day to help schools serve all students no matter who they are or where they come from to find and build a meaningful career.

Bonus areas of expertise

  • Development of enterprise products that connect to a marketplace (eg. CRM)

  • Background in EdTech, higher ed, HR and/or recruiting

  • Technical fluency, either as an engineer or having built complex products with engineers

Compensation range

  • $160,000-$190,000 per year

For cash compensation, we set standard ranges for all U.S.-based roles based on function, level, and geographic location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. In order to be compliant with local legislation, as well as to provide greater transparency to candidates, we share salary ranges on all job postings regardless of desired hiring location. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including geographic location as well as candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

About us

Handshake is the #1 place to launch a career with no connections, experience, or luck required. The platform connects up-and-coming talent with 750,000+ employers - from Fortune 500 companies like Google, Nike, and Target to thousands of public school districts, healthcare systems, and nonprofits. In 2022 we announced our $200M Series F funding round. This Series F fundraise and valuation of $3.5B will fuel Handshake’s next phase of growth and propel our mission to help more people start, restart, and jumpstart their careers.

When it comes to our workforce strategy, we’ve thought deeply about how work-life should look here at Handshake. With our Hub-Based Remote Working strategy, employees can enjoy the flexibility of remote work, whilst ensuring collaboration and team experiences in a shared space remains possible. Handshake is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver, New York, London, and Berlin and teammates working globally.

Check out our careers site to find a hub near you!

What we offer

At Handshake, we'll give you the tools to feel healthy, happy and secure.

Benefits below apply to employees in full-time positions.

  • 💰 Equity and ownership in a fast-growing company.
  • 🍼 16 Weeks of paid parental leave for birth giving parents & 10 weeks of paid parental leave for non-birth giving parents.
  • 💝 Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision policies including LGTBQ+ Coverage. We also provide resources for Mental Health Assistance, Employee Assistance Programs and counseling support.
  • 💻 Handshake offers $500/£360 home office stipend for you to spend during your first 3 months to create a productive and comfortable workspace at home.
  • 📚 Generous learning & development opportunities and an annual $2,000/£1,500/€1,850 stipend for you to grow your skills and career.
  • 💰 Financial coaching through Origin to help you through your financial journey.
  • 🛜 Monthly internet stipend and a brand new MacBook to allow you to do your best work.
  • 🚃 Monthly commuter stipend for you to expense your travel to the office (for office-based employees).
  • 🥗 Free lunch provided twice a week across all offices.
  • 🤝 Referral bonus to reward you when you bring great talent to Handshake.

(US-specific benefits, in addition to the first section)

  • 🏦 401k Match: Handshake offers a dollar-for-dollar match on 1% of deferred salary, up to a maximum of $1,200 per year.
  • 🏝 All full-time US-based Handshakers are eligible for our flexible time off policy to get out and see the world. In addition, we offer 8 standardized holidays, and 2 additional days of flexible holiday time off. Lastly, we have a Winter #ShakeBreak, a one-week period of Collective Time Off.
  • 🍼 Lactation support: Handshake partners with Milk Stork to provide a comprehensive 100% employer-sponsored lactation support to traveling parents and guardians.

(UK-specific benefits, in addition to the first section)

  • 🏦 Pension Scheme: Handshake will provide you with a workplace pension, where you will make contributions based on 5% of your salary. Handshake will pay the equivalent of 3% towards your pension plan, subject to qualifying earnings limits.
  • 🏝 Up to 25 days of vacation to encourage people to reset, recharge, and refresh, in addition to 8 bank holidays throughout the year.
  • 🤝 Regular offsites each year to bring the team together + opportunity to travel to our HQ in San Francisco.
  • 🛍️ Discounts across various high street retailers, cinemas and other social activities exclusively for Handshake UK employees.

(Germany-specific benefits, in addition to the first section)

  • 🏝 25 days of annual leave + we have a Winter #ShakeBreak, a one-week period of Collective Time Off across the company.
  • 🤝 Regular offsites each year to bring the team together + opportunity to travel to our HQ in San Francisco once a year.
  • 🧘 Urban sports club membership offering access to a diverse network of fitness and wellness facilities.
  • 🛍️ Discounts across various high street retailers, cinemas and other social activities exclusively for Handshake Germany employees.

For roles based in Romania: Please ask your recruiter about region specific benefits.

Looking for more? Explore our mission, values and comprehensive US benefits at joinhandshake.com/careers.