Software Product Manager, PERSONA Campus Online

Software Product Manager, PERSONA Campus Online

Position Summary

The Software Product Manager is responsible for defining and executing the vision, strategy, roadmap, and new product development priorities for PERSONA Campus Online. This role serves as the product owner and market advocate, translating customer and market needs into product strategy, business cases, and actionable requirements that drive innovation and growth.

Working closely with customers, engineering, sales, marketing, customer experience, and support teams, the Product Manager leads products from concept through launch and adoption. Success in this role requires balancing customer value, market opportunity, technical feasibility, cybersecurity requirements, product quality, and business objectives.

The Software Product Manager serves as the voice of the customer and the commercial owner of the product roadmap, ensuring new solutions deliver measurable value to customers and the business.

About PERSONA Campus Online

PERSONA Campus Online is a centralized access control platform designed specifically for higher education environments. Installed within the customer’s network, the application manages credentials, permissions, schedules, events, and connected access-control devices across campus.

The platform supports a wide range of higher-education security and operational needs, including residence hall access, academic calendar transitions, student turnover, emergency response initiatives, and integrations with other campus systems.

Key Responsibilities

Product Strategy & Roadmap

• Define, own, and communicate the product vision, market positioning, strategic direction, and multi-year roadmap for PERSONA Campus Online.
• Identify market opportunities and customer challenges that drive long-term product growth and differentiation.
• Develop and maintain product strategies aligned with company objectives, market trends, and customer needs.
• Prioritize product investments based on customer value, market demand, revenue potential, strategic alignment, risk, and development capacity.

New Product Development

• Lead product development initiatives from customer discovery and concept definition through requirements, validation, launch, and market adoption.
• Conduct customer research, interviews, and market analysis to uncover unmet needs and emerging opportunities.
• Translate customer insights into prioritized requirements, user workflows, acceptance criteria, and measurable business outcomes.
• Develop business cases that evaluate market opportunity, customer impact, costs, competitive differentiation, and expected return on investment.
• Ensure products are designed with scalability, cybersecurity, quality, and compatibility requirements in mind.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Collaborate with software, hardware, firmware, quality assurance, cybersecurity, implementation, sales, marketing, and support teams throughout the product lifecycle.
• Align stakeholders around priorities, timelines, and expected outcomes.
• Influence decisions and drive execution across cross-functional teams without direct organizational authority.
• Ensure new functionality supports credentials, readers, locks, controllers, communication infrastructure, integrations, and backward compatibility with the existing installed base.

Customer & Market Engagement

• Gather input from customers, prospects, sales teams, customer experience, technical support, implementation teams, and industry partners.
• Monitor customer needs, competitive activity, technology trends, cybersecurity requirements, and developments within higher education.
• Support strategic customer meetings, product demonstrations, industry conferences, and major sales opportunities.
• Build strong relationships with key customers and stakeholders to ensure the product continues to meet evolving campus requirements.
• Product Launch & Performance
• Coordinate launch readiness activities, including positioning, messaging, training, documentation, compatibility guidance, sales enablement, and support preparation.
• Define and track product success metrics, including adoption, customer satisfaction, revenue growth, support trends, and launch performance.
• Continuously evaluate product performance and use data-driven insights to inform future roadmap decisions.

Sustaining Partnership

The Software Product Manager owns product strategy, innovation, and new product development initiatives. The Technical Support Manager owns the sustaining backlog, including defect resolution, support trends, operational issues, and incremental product enhancements.

Together, these roles collaborate to:

• Align development priorities and resource allocation.
• Determine whether initiatives belong within sustaining engineering or new product development.
• Resolve competing priorities and resource conflicts.
• Ensure a smooth transition of newly released capabilities into ongoing customer support and maintenance processes.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related discipline, or equivalent industry experience.
• Experience in product management, solutions consulting, implementation, customer success, technical support, sales engineering, or a related role within the electronic access control industry.
• Direct experience working with colleges and universities on access control, campus credentials, residence hall security, campus card systems, or related technologies.
• Strong understanding of higher-education stakeholders, procurement processes, implementation environments, and academic operating cycles.
• Working knowledge of access-control technologies, including software platforms, credentials, readers, locks, controllers, communication protocols, and system integrations.
• Demonstrated ability to conduct customer discovery and translate business needs into actionable product requirements.
• Strong business acumen and decision-making skills, with the ability to prioritize competing opportunities and clearly communicate trade-offs.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence outcomes without direct authority.
• Excellent written, verbal, presentation, and facilitation skills.
• Experience with software development lifecycles, release planning, customer validation, and structured new product development processes.
• Ability to travel up to 50%, including domestic and international travel.
• Valid passport with the ability to maintain eligibility for international travel.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with PERSONA Campus Online or similar higher-education access control platforms.
• Familiarity with ASSA ABLOY electronic access solutions, including Aperio technology, controllers, locks, and associated door hardware.
• Experience integrating with campus card systems, student information systems (SIS), mobile credential platforms, APIs, and third-party applications.
• Experience managing products that combine installed software, cloud services, firmware, and connected physical devices.
• Experience working within agile product development environments.