Product Manager

Position Objective:

The Product Manager is responsible for defining the strategy, roadmap, and success metrics for AI-powered products built and maintained by the Technology team. This role partners closely with business Product Owners, data scientists, and engineering teams to translate organizational goals into well-structured requirements and delivery plans. The Product Manager drives alignment across stakeholders, facilitates Agile ceremonies, and ensures that AI product development remains grounded in measurable business outcomes and user needs. This role requires a blend of product strategy, AI literacy, and Agile expertise to drive continuous value delivery in a rapidly evolving technology landscape.

Critical Duties:

• Define and champion the product strategy, vision, and roadmap for AI-powered products, aligning development priorities to enterprise goals and measurable business outcomes.
• Partner with business Product Owners to shape and refine the product backlog, ensuring items are clearly defined, properly prioritized, and sprint-ready.
• Serve as the primary liaison between business stakeholders, business Product Owners, and the development team, translating requirements into actionable backlog items in Jira.
• Lead and facilitate Agile ceremonies including sprint planning, backlog refinement, sprint review, and retrospectives in partnership with the Scrum Master and business Product Owners.
• Drive prioritization decisions that balance urgency, business value, technical feasibility, and AI model performance considerations across the product portfolio.
• Collaborate with data scientists, engineers, and architects to ensure AI model behavior and outputs align with product requirements and business KPIs.
• Define success metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) for AI products, and track delivery against those measures on an ongoing basis.
• Engage stakeholders at all levels to gather, validate, and communicate product requirements, roadmap status, and delivery progress.
• Evaluate and accept or reject sprint deliverables in collaboration with business Product Owners based on defined acceptance criteria and Definition of Done.
• Identify and manage AI-specific product risks — including model drift, bias, data quality gaps, and ethical considerations — as first-class product concerns.

Essential Duties:

(OTHER DUTIES MAY BE ASSIGNED)

• Maintain a well-groomed product backlog in Jira in partnership with business Product Owners, including epics, user stories, subtasks, and bug reports with sufficient detail for development execution.
• Develop and manage product roadmaps that reflect business priorities, stakeholder input, AI model capabilities, and technical constraints.
• Collaborate with UX designers and business analysts to ensure user stories reflect validated user needs, personas, and workflows.
• Contribute to test strategy by reviewing acceptance criteria and participating in user acceptance testing (UAT) alongside business Product Owners.
• Monitor and report on sprint velocity, backlog health, and product delivery metrics to IT leadership and the Project Management Office (PMO).
• Support release planning and coordinate cross-team dependencies with business Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and the PMO.
• Evaluate emerging AI tools, frameworks, and industry best practices to inform product decisions and roadmap strategy.
• Contribute to the continuous improvement of the Company's Collaboration Framework and Agile practice maturity.
• Define non-functional requirements related to AI products, including performance, reliability, security, compliance, and responsible AI standards.
• Manage and synthesize feedback from end users, business Product Owners, and development teams to continuously refine the product.
• Create appropriate product artifacts including product descriptions, feature definitions, and user requirements in standard toolsets.
• Support vendor evaluation and SOW review for AI-related tools or platforms as needed.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

• N/A

American Campus Communities Culture Commitments:

• Our people are devoted to a culture of inclusion, diversity, and equality in the workplace and our communities. We are committed to intentionally executing an evolving set of goals specific to inclusion, diversity, and accountability, driven by empathetic leadership and embraced by all.
• The core of American Campus culture involves everyone being fully invested in everything that we do down to picking up the smallest piece of trash in the office and around our communities. No matter their position or duration at the organization, everyone picks up trash.
• Serve as an American Campus representative and liaison in all interactions.
• Certain activities involved in this position may be photographed and/or video and audio recorded for quality control and/or training purposes. Compliance with the Photo, Video and Voice Recording Policy is a condition of employment.

Qualifications

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed are representative of the minimum knowledge, skills, and/or abilities required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Education/Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field preferred.
• 3+ years of experience as a Product Manager, Product Owner, Business Analyst, or similar role in a technology environment.
• Demonstrated experience working with Agile/Scrum teams, writing or refining user stories, and managing product backlogs.
• Experience partnering with business stakeholders or business Product Owners to translate requirements into technical deliverables.
• Experience working with AI/ML products, data pipelines, or analytics platforms strongly preferred.
• Understanding of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and Agile delivery frameworks.
• Proficiency in understanding full stack applications and architecture design.
• Student housing industry experience preferred.

Certificates/Licenses:

• PMP (Project Management Professional), PMI-ACP, or equivalent certification preferred.
• CSPO (Certified Scrum Product Owner), PSPO (Professional Scrum Product Owner), CSM, or SAFe POPM a plus.

Knowledge/Skills/Abilities:

Knowledge of:

• Jira for backlog management, sprint planning, story pointing, and reporting.
• Agile/Scrum methodologies including sprint ceremonies, Definition of Done, and velocity tracking.
• AI/ML concepts including model lifecycle, data pipelines, training data, and model evaluation.
• User story frameworks (e.g., "As a [user], I want [goal], so that [reason]") and acceptance criteria best practices.
• Product roadmapping and prioritization frameworks (e.g., MoSCoW, WSJF, RICE).
• Epics, personas, and user journey mapping.
• Lucid Chart, Confluence, or similar collaboration and documentation tools.

Skill in:

• Microsoft Suite with proficiency in PowerPoint and Excel.
• Data analysis and use of product analytics to drive prioritization decisions.
• Effective written and verbal communication across technical and non-technical audiences.
• Collaborative facilitation of requirements gathering sessions, sprint ceremonies, and stakeholder reviews.
• Working with cross-functional teams in a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment.
• Organizational and analytical thinking across multiple concurrent product initiatives.

Ability to:

• Define and articulate a clear product vision and translate it into an executable strategy and roadmap.
• Partner effectively with business Product Owners to shape, refine, and prioritize the product backlog.
• Facilitate requirements gathering and drive alignment between business stakeholders and development teams.
• Prioritize competing stakeholder requests and make confident trade-off decisions under ambiguity.
• Understand and communicate technical concepts related to AI, data, and software systems.
• Work independently as a self-starter with a hands-on approach while maintaining cross-team alignment.
• Remain detail-oriented while managing priorities across multiple products and development sprints.
• Build trusted relationships with business Product Owners, development teams, and leadership at all levels.
• Read, analyze, and interpret business and technical documentation to inform product decisions.

Work Environment:

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. This job operates in a professional environment. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.

This job requires US hours operating between 8am-4pm CST.

Physical Demands:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.

While performing the duties of this job:

The employee is regularly required to:

• talk/hear.
• stand; walk; use hands to finger, handle or feel; and reach with hands and arms.

The employee is occasionally required to:

• sit; climb or balance; and stoop, kneel or crouch.

The employee must be able to lift and/or move up to:

• 10 pounds.

Specific vision abilities required by this job include:

• close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and ability to adjust focus.

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Other Duties

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Employee signature below constitutes the employee's understanding of the requirements, essential functions and duties of the position.

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EEO Statement

The Company is an equal opportunity employer. In accordance with applicable law, we prohibit discrimination against any applicant, employee, or other covered person based on any legally recognized basis, including, but not limited to: veteran status, uniformed servicemember status, race, color, caste, immigration status, religion, religious creed (including religious dress and grooming practices), sex, gender, gender expression, gender identity, marital status, sexual orientation, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation or related medical conditions), age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, physical or mental disability, genetic information (including testing and characteristics), protected leave status, domestic violence victim status, or any other consideration protected by federal, state or local law. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations, if you need an accommodation to complete the application process, please email [email protected]