Principal Product Manager
Job Description
The Principal Product Manager role at Arizona State University (ASU) leads mobile product strategy and an AI-powered communication agent platform, shaping how students, faculty, and staff interact with digital services. The position emphasizes trustworthy, human-centered experiences, scalable platform thinking, and measurable improvements across the university’s digital transformation efforts.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the University’s Mobile Strategy, defining and evolving a comprehensive approach that enables students, faculty, and staff to complete critical tasks seamlessly from anywhere.
- Improve mobile experiences beyond feature parity by creating differentiated, intuitive journeys aligned with how people live and work.
- Develop and scale an AI-powered communication agent by shaping vision and roadmap for assistance with decision-making, navigation, task completion, and personalized guidance.
- Ensure AI-enabled systems are transparent and responsible, clearly augmenting human expertise rather than replacing it.
- Integrate mobile and AI into a cohesive experience, embedding AI capabilities thoughtfully to deliver proactive, context-aware support.
- Set long-term direction for intelligent, adaptive platforms, prioritizing interoperability, accessibility, privacy, and trust.
- Connect institutional goals to product visions, outcome-based roadmaps, and success metrics focused on engagement, efficiency, retention, and satisfaction.
- Navigate complexity across platforms, departments, and user groups, aligning strategy across multiple audiences.
- Bring clarity to competing priorities and ensure alignment across leadership, stakeholders, and delivery teams.
- Lead responsible AI adoption by establishing principles covering ethics, transparency, bias mitigation, data stewardship, and accountability.
- Build confidence across the institution through communication and governance.
- Lead through influence by partnering with engineering, design, research, data, and university leadership to manage trade-offs and sequencing.
- Mentor and elevate senior product leaders by coaching toward systems thinking, confident leadership, and clear product ownership.
- Strengthen product practice and culture by advancing discovery, validation, experimentation, and delivery practices.
- Ensure initiatives follow a disciplined, transparent workflow from hypothesis through measurable outcomes.
- Leverage AI in routine tasks and contribute ideas to improve unit efficiency and overall performance.
- Foster a positive culture that upholds organizational values and champions engagement in all its forms.
- Collaborate across teams and participate in ET/ASU events and programs.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree and ten (10) years of experience appropriate to the area of assignment/field, or an equivalent combination of experience and/or training yielding comparable knowledge, skills, and abilities.
- 8+ years of product management experience, including leading large cross-functional initiatives.
- Proven experience owning complex digital platforms with measurable outcomes.
- Experience leading mobile product strategy, including native apps, responsive platforms, or mobile-first ecosystems.
- Experience launching or scaling AI-enabled products.
- Experience building or integrating agentic AI systems, intelligent assistants, or workflow automation tools.
- Experience in SaaS, digital platforms, or complex enterprise ecosystems.
- Strong understanding of responsible and ethical AI principles.
- Expertise in user-centered design and agile product development.
- Demonstrated success mentoring senior product managers.
- Strong communication and storytelling skills for executive and non-technical audiences.
- Passion for innovation, simplicity, and improving the educational experience.
- Demonstrated ability to model empathy, compassion, and emotional intelligence.
- Experience in a values-driven organization with a commitment to inclusion and belonging.
- Ability to cultivate a psychologically safe environment where team members can thrive.
- Capacity to inspire and drive meaningful change in individual, institutional, and corporate behaviors to support a more sustainable environment.
- Commitment to leading by example through effective communication, active participation, and advocacy for the institution’s sustainability programs.
Preferred Hiring Notes
- Graduate assistant, intern, and part-time positions are counted as half time for experience equivalency (one year equals six months of experience).
Work Location and Environment
Location: Tempe, AZ (onsite), with campus at Tempe.
- Primarily a standard, climate-controlled office environment.
- Work may involve extended periods of sitting, standing, or moving between office spaces.
- Regular use of a computer (desktop and/or laptop), including keyboard and mouse.
- Proficiency with a variety of technologies for collaboration.
- Ability to stand for varying lengths of time and walk moderate distances.
Driving requirement: Not required.
Compensation
Salary Range: USD 103,700 - 125,000 per year (DOE).
Benefits
- Flexible work environment, including hybrid work where staff are in person three days per week, with opportunities to explore work arrangements with a supervisor beyond a traditional schedule.
- Professional development built in; ET encourages employees to seek additional certificates and degrees through ASU’s top-ranked programs with major tuition breaks.
Department and Culture
Enterprise Technology (ET) supports and accelerates the work of the New American University, acting as both an enabler and catalyst for ASU’s vision. The organization emphasizes autonomy, flexibility, and distributed decision-making.
- ET is described as rapidly reconfigurable and entrepreneurial, prioritizing and executing to meet the needs of ASU’s community of learners, faculty, researchers, and staff.
- ET fosters a culture that nurtures, engages, and embraces many voices with a shared lens of positive community impact and expanded collaboration opportunities.
How to Apply
Current employees, student workers seeking staff opportunities, and students applying for student worker positions must apply directly through the Workday Jobs Hub.
- Use single sign-on to log in: https://www.myworkday.com/asu/d/inst/1$9925/9925$26620.htmld
- Application must include: Cover letter and Resume or CV.
- Documents should be clearly labeled and include your name; applicants may upload multiple documents or combine required materials into a single PDF.
- Resume should include employment information in month and year format (example: 6/04 to 8/14), plus job title, job duties, and employer name for each position.
- Incomplete applications or missing required materials may not be considered.
- Do not withdraw the application to make edits; once withdrawn, it cannot be edited, reactivated, or replaced.
- Only electronic applications will be accepted.
Application Content Requirement
In the cover letter, briefly outline your mobile experience and the measurable business impact of your work.
Funding, Eligibility, and Screening
- Funding: No Federal Funding.
- Eligibility: Applicants must be eligible to work in the United States.
- ASU conducts pre-employment screening, which may include verification of work history, academic credentials, licenses, and certifications.
- ASU pre-employment screening includes a criminal background check and verification of work history, academic credentials, licenses, and certifications. Employment is contingent upon successful passing of the background check.
- This role is safety/security sensitive and includes a fingerprint check. Employment is contingent upon successful passing of the fingerprint check.