Principal Product Manager

Location: United States

Job Type: Full-Time | Exempt | Remote

Salary Range: $$165,000 – $175,000 per year

About VCI - Transformation Begins with Our Purpose

VCI was founded upon the concept of providing a payment solution to help businesses improve their efficiency, stability, and grow their profits. More than 30 years later, and with a lot more options in the marketplace, we’re that same entrepreneurial company that stands out from the rest. Our leading technology is powered by Commercial Bank of California, a $3.8 billion Latino owned, community business bank, that provides us the stability and flexibility that comes with a strong financial institution.

Our clients and partners have honored us with a 97 percent retention rate, because we provide them with more than just a means to process ACH payments.

Job Summary

The Principal Product Manager is a senior product leader responsible for translating enterprise strategy, customer and partner needs, regulatory obligations, security priorities, and operational requirements into measurable product outcomes and executable roadmaps across VCI payment platforms. The role reports directly to Executive Management and independently leads assigned product domains while partnering closely with the Director of Product Management and leaders across Technology, Operations, Risk, Compliance, Information Security, Finance, Sales, and Customer Support.

The position expands Product capacity today and strengthens leadership continuity for the future. It reduces single-person dependency by establishing transferable product knowledge, documented decision authority, disciplined governance, secondary coverage, and durable operating practices. The role must be capable of maintaining essential Product operations within defined authority during a planned or unplanned leadership absence or transition.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Product Leadership, Independent Ownership, and Continuity

Independently lead assigned payment platforms, product domains, strategic initiatives, and operating responsibilities within approved enterprise priorities and delegated authority.

Partner with the Director of Product Management to divide portfolio ownership, clarify decision rights, balance workload, and maintain coordinated product strategy without recreating a single approval bottleneck.

Represent Product in executive and cross-functional forums; communicate portfolio status, decisions, tradeoffs, dependencies, risks, target outcomes, and required escalations.

Maintain succession-ready operating playbooks, decision logs, stakeholder maps, ownership matrices, delegated-authority records, cross-training plans, and secondary coverage for critical product domains.

Provide functional leadership, coaching, and standards for Product Managers and Business Analysts. This is initially a senior individual-contributor role and may exercise functional leadership without direct people-management responsibility.

Product Strategy, Customer Value, and Commercial Outcomes

Develop product vision, multi-quarter roadmaps, measurable objectives, and investment recommendations for assigned payment platforms, integrations, operational workflows, and customer-facing capabilities.

Build a structured understanding of customer, partner, market, operational, and support needs using stakeholder interviews, workflow observation, transaction and operating data, sales feedback, service trends, and competitive analysis.

Define target users, use cases, value propositions, adoption objectives, service impacts, and measurable business outcomes for major product investments.

Partner with Sales, Marketing, Finance, Operations, and Customer Support on business cases, pricing and packaging input, launch readiness, customer communication, adoption, and post-launch performance.

Use product, operational, financial, risk, and customer measures to recommend continued investment, remediation, rationalization, migration, or retirement.

Portfolio Prioritization and Resource Planning

Prioritize demand using business value, customer impact, regulatory and security urgency, operational and technical risk, dependencies, capacity, and effort; document approvals, deferrals, assumptions, and tradeoffs.

Recommend allocation of Product capacity across strategic initiatives, customer commitments, regulatory obligations, approved security remediation, operational support, technical debt, and modernization.

Partner with Technology leadership to reconcile product demand with engineering capacity, architecture dependencies, vendor constraints, delivery risk, and release sequencing.

Identify capability, staffing, vendor, knowledge-transfer, and succession needs and present evidence-based recommendations to Executive Management.

Requirements, Documentation, and Product Governance

Lead Product requirements intake, discovery, analysis, review, approval, traceability, and change control, including business requirements, process flows, user stories, nonfunctional requirements, and acceptance criteria.

Ensure delivery commitments are supported by defined business outcomes, users, impacted workflows, data, controls, dependencies, security considerations, and measurable acceptance criteria.

Maintain current product decision records, business rules, system behavior, platform and integration dependencies, workflow documentation, roadmap assumptions, release history, known constraints, and primary and secondary ownership.

Lead Product traceability from approved business need through requirements, implementation, testing, release, production validation, and outcome measurement in coordination with accountable Engineering, QA, Operations, Security, and change-management owners.

Establish documentation standards, review cadences, ownership, and aging controls so institutional product knowledge remains accessible, current, auditable, and transferable.

Backlog, Delivery Effectiveness, and Engineering Partnership

Lead an ordered, groomed, traceable, and delivery-ready backlog for assigned domains; ensure epics and stories meet readiness standards before sprint or release commitment.

Convert approved priorities into sequenced backlogs, release objectives, milestones, requirements, and acceptance criteria; surface aging decisions, unresolved dependencies, and stalled work for timely resolution or escalation.

Facilitate scope and change control, clarify requirements, assess deliverables against approved acceptance criteria, and coordinate Product decisions with internal, offshore, nearshore, and third-party delivery partners.

Define product and business release criteria, coordinate readiness, and confirm post-release business behavior and outcomes without replacing QA, operational, security, architecture, or production-change approvals.

Use delivery and outcome measures to identify recurring causes of delay, rework, ambiguity, dependency failure, or missed value and recommend corrective action.

Payments Platform Ownership and Modernization

Lead product responsibilities across VCI’s Legacy, ACHWorks, and Veer platforms as parallel operating and modernization priorities, with clearly defined platform ownership, integration dependencies, and migration objectives.

Lead requirements across ACH transaction lifecycles, clearing, settlement, returns, exceptions, reconciliation, reporting, merchant onboarding, partner integrations, and related customer and operational workflows.

Translate approved NACHA, regulatory, risk, compliance, and sponsor-bank interpretations into product requirements and acceptance criteria; support processor, sponsor-bank, ISV, and integration discussions.

Partner with Architecture and Technology on business-aligned modernization plans that improve transparency and observability, reduce key-person and vendor dependency, and define sequencing, readiness, rollback, and retirement criteria.

Security, Risk, Compliance, Audit, and Production Readiness

Incorporate approved critical and high-risk security remediation, regulatory obligations, and risk-treatment priorities into product planning and backlog processes in accordance with established Information Security and enterprise-risk requirements.

Ensure assigned remediation work has documented ownership, priority, dependencies, target disposition, and escalation when timing, capacity, scope, or business priorities conflict with established risk requirements.

Maintain audit-ready Product records and coordinate supporting approval, testing, exception, and post-release evidence from the applicable control owners.

Define business impact, customer impact, workarounds, and Product remediation priority; coordinate issue triage and corrective actions with Engineering, QA, Operations, Support, Infrastructure, Information Security, and other accountable functions.

Product does not determine vulnerability severity, approve risk acceptance, authorize security exceptions, or replace independent control approvals.

Decision Authority and Operating Boundaries

Must approve Product requirements, acceptance criteria, backlog sequencing, Product readiness, and routine portfolio decisions within assigned domains and delegated limits.

May lead prioritization and recommend investment, deferral, remediation, migration, resource-allocation, vendor, and platform-rationalization actions.

Must escalate material regulatory interpretations, contractual commitments, budget decisions, architecture or security exceptions, production change approvals, and enterprise-risk acceptance to the designated accountable owner or Executive Management.

Does not replace the independent authority of Executive Management, Compliance, Risk, Information Security, QA, Operations, Architecture, or Technology change approvers.

Under normal operations, independently leads assigned domains and Product operating disciplines. During an authorized leadership absence or transition, may assume broader day-to-day Product leadership within documented delegation limits.

Minimum Qualifications

8+ years of progressive experience in Product Management, payment platforms, financial technology, or related product leadership, including ownership of complex regulated products from discovery through production operation.

Deep knowledge of ACH processing, transaction lifecycles, returns, exceptions, settlement, reconciliation, controls, operational workflows, and partner integrations.

Demonstrated ability to lead substantial product domains independently, represent Product with executives, resolve cross-functional conflicts, and maintain continuity in a complex operating environment.

Experience developing product strategy, roadmaps, business cases, requirements, process models, user stories, acceptance criteria, KPIs, and evidence-based prioritization decisions.

Ability to understand API documentation, REST APIs, webhooks, event-driven integrations, data models, service dependencies, logs, and distributed-system failure scenarios sufficiently to make sound product decisions. Hands-on software development is not required.

Experience with Jira, Confluence, or comparable product, requirements, and knowledge-management platforms, and with Agile or Scrum delivery practices.

Experience leading internal and distributed delivery partners within formal SDLC, change-management, audit, security, and regulatory-control environments.

Exceptional executive communication, facilitation, documentation, analytical, decision-making, and influencing skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• NACHA Accredited ACH Professional certification.
• Leadership experience across multiple payment or banking platforms, including modernization, migration, product rationalization, or vendor transition.
• Experience with payments risk, fraud, underwriting, billing, reconciliation, reporting, merchant onboarding, processors, sponsor banks, or ISVs.
• Familiarity with SOC examinations, IT general controls, vulnerability-remediation governance, and audit evidence.

Success Measures

• Roadmaps, priorities, and investment recommendations are current, approved, measurable, and traceable to enterprise objectives and customer or operational outcomes.
• Assigned initiatives enter delivery with complete, approved, and traceable requirements and acceptance criteria, with preventable ambiguity and rework identified and reduced.
• Critical product decisions, assumptions, approvals, dependencies, risks, and changes are documented, current, auditable, and not dependent on a single individual.
• Approved security and regulatory remediation has visible ownership, priority, disposition, and timely escalation of conflicts or delays.
• Releases meet defined product and business outcomes without bypassing quality, security, operational, architecture, or change controls.
• Product knowledge, leadership coverage, platform ownership, and escalation paths are transferable across appropriate primary and secondary owners.
• Product adoption, processing, revenue, service cost, operational efficiency, customer impact, and risk-reduction measures are defined and monitored where applicable.
• Modernization and governance demonstrably reduce delivery friction, vendor dependency, unresolved platform dependencies, and key-person risk.

Benefits & Perks

• Competitive employer contribution to medical, dental and vision coverage
• 401k plan with employer match
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) and Dependent Care Accounts

Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

• Employer provided Calm subscription
• Employer provided mental health benefits through Teladoc
• Life, AD&D and disability insurance
• Minimum 10 Days of Vacation, 6 Paid Federal Holidays, 5 paid personal days/per year
• Online discount program

Tuition Reimbursement Program

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Equal Employment Opportunity & Accommodations

VCI is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees and applicants. All qualified individuals will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.

We evaluate applicants fairly and equitably, including those with criminal histories, in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

VCI is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you require a reasonable accommodation during the application or interview process, please contact us at [email protected] with the nature of your request and your contact information.

Recruitment Policy

VCI does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than directly from a candidate. Any unsolicited resumes sent to VCI, either directly or indirectly, will be considered the property of VCI.

We will not pay a fee for any placement resulting from the receipt of an unsolicited resume. To submit candidates for consideration, recruiting agencies must have a valid, written, and fully executed agreement with VCI. Without such an agreement in place, no agency submissions will be accepted or compensated.