Senior Product Manager @ Earnest

Our mission is to make higher education accessible and affordable for everyone. We empower students with financial support and supercharge their ability to pay down their debt, so they can get on the right financial track, fast.

We build tools that help people feel in control of their financial future, including:

Private student loans - low rates, people-first service, and flexible payments.
Student loan refinancing - break free from high-interest rates or monthly payments.
Scholarships - access to thousands of scholarships to help students pay less.

Earnies are committed to helping students live their best lives, free from the stress of student debt. If you’re as passionate as we are about our mission, read more below, and let’s build something great together!

This role will report to the Vice President of Product - Lending.

We’re looking for a Senior Product Manager to lead funnel conversion across our lending products—owning the borrower funnel end-to-end and driving the next stage of growth in loan originations. This is a highly visible, high-impact role at the heart of our lending business. You’ll work closely with a dedicated cross-functional team to simplify the funnel, personalize the borrower journey, and reimagine conversion through automation and AI.

This role is ideal for someone who thrives in ownership-heavy environments, is fluent in funnel optimization and experimentation, and can translate complexity into clear, actionable plans. If you’re energized by digging into tough conversion problems, have a growth mindset, and are ready to roll up your sleeves to drive impact in a competitive space—we want to talk.

What You’ll Do

Own conversion funnel strategy across all lending products, from top of funnel through funded loan.
Drive loan originations by identifying and delivering funnel improvements that increase application starts, completions, and funding rates.
Simplify and reimagine the borrower journey through automation, new data sources, personalization, and segmentation.
Run funnel experiments that optimize borrower experience and uncover scalable levers for growth.
Leverage LLMs and AI to create innovative, data-driven borrower experiences and streamlined workflows.
Collaborate closely with engineering, design, analytics, marketing, operations, and credit to deliver results.
Use both qualitative insights and quantitative data to uncover borrower needs, validate hypotheses, and measure impact.
Define, track, and deliver against funnel KPIs (conversion rates, drop-off points, time to fund, NPS, etc.) and business outcomes (loan volume, unit economics).
Ensure funnel initiatives meet compliance and regulatory requirements.
Communicate strategy, progress, and learnings to stakeholders across the company.

What You’ll Bring

5+ years of product management experience, with a track record of end-to-end ownership and results.
3+ years in lending products
3+ years in fintech (can be overlapping with the above).
A builder’s mindset—you’re hands-on, comfortable with ambiguity, and skilled at turning big ideas into clear, achievable plans.
Strong product instincts backed by data fluency—you know how to use metrics, experimentation, and customer insights to guide decisions.
Excellent communication and storytelling skills—you can align teams, influence stakeholders, and make complexity easy to understand.
A natural collaborator who thrives in cross-functional settings and builds strong partnerships across product, engineering, design, analytics, and business teams.
A passion for solving real problems for real people—and for making financial products simpler, more transparent, and more effective.

Where

This role will be based in the US and is fully remote

A little about our pay philosophy: We take pride in compensating our employees fairly and equitably. We are showcasing a range of your potential base salary based on the roles location. The successful candidate’s starting pay will also be determined based on job-related qualifications, internal compensation, candidate location and budget. This range may be modified in the future.

Pay Range

$190,000—$240,000 USD

Earnest believes in enabling our employees to live their best lives. We offer a variety of perks and competitive benefits, including:

Health, Dental, & Vision benefits plus savings plans
Mac computers + work-from-home stipend to set up your home office
Monthly internet and phone reimbursement
Employee Stock Purchase Plan
Restricted Stock Units (RSUs)
401(k) plan to help you save for retirement plus a company match
Robust tuition reimbursement program
$1,000 travel perk on each Earnie-versary to anywhere in the world
Competitive days of annual PTO
Competitive parental leave

What Makes an Earnie:

At Earnest, our people bring our cultural principles to life. These principles define how we work, how we win, and what we expect of ourselves and each other:

Every Second Counts: Speed is our competitive advantage. Our customers need better solutions, and the faster we execute, the greater our chance of success.
Choose To Do Hard Things: We win by tackling the hard things that others avoid, fueled by grit and resilience.
Pursue Excellence: Great companies, teams, and individuals never settle and are proud of the work that they do. What’s good enough today won’t be good enough tomorrow. Excellence isn’t a destination; it’s a mindset of continuous improvement.
Lead Together: Our success comes from how we work together. Leadership is not about titles—it is about action. We take ownership, drive results, and move forward as a team.
Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously: We take our work seriously, not ourselves. The stakes are high, but a sense of humor keeps us grounded, creative, and resilient.

At Earnest, we are committed to building an environment where our employees feel included, valued, and heard. Our belief is that a strong commitment to diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging enables us to move forward with our mission. We are dedicated to adding new perspectives to the team and encourage anyone to apply if your experience is close to what we are looking for.

Earnest provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or genetics. Qualified applicants with criminal histories will be considered for the position in a manner consistent with the Fair Chance Ordinance.

Senior Product Manager

Lending Conversion

Earnest

Compensation Overview

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

What critics are saying

What makes Earnest unique

Benefits